Baseball T Makeover

I love baseball T's. I dunno about you, I think they're super comfy and really cute. I have a few myself, but my favorite is this gigantic one I wear when I'm loafing around my house. I get a little embarrassed when I wear it around my neighborhood though, so i decided to give it a little makeover.

I gave up on a sexy pose, little teapot it is.

First step, tighten it up. I turned it inside out and put it back on, and pinned all down the side and underneath the arms so that it was the size I was looking for. Word to the wise? Err on the side of a little larger, the first round I did was way too tight and I had to take out my stitches and do them over. A little wiggle room is always a good thing.

Pinning my armpits was awkward to say the least.

I then traced a line down the side where the pins were, and saw that for the body the pins were 2.5 inches in from the edge. I mirrored this on the other side of the shirt.

 

 Pencil washes off fabric. Best quilting tip evar.

I replaced the safety pins with actual pins, the safety pins just make it easier to pin the shirt while wearing it so they don't fall out when I'm taking it off.

 Little pins coming in handy.

I drew a line down where the safety pins were on the sleeves, and measured the new width compared to the original width. At the armpit the seam had been taken in 4 inches, and at the cuff the seam was taken in 2 inches. I matched this on the other sleeve and replaced those safety pins with regular ones.
I made a nice simple straight stitch all down the side and sleeves of the shirt, but BEFORE cutting the excess fabric off I tried it back on to check the size.
Like I said, the first time was too tight, glad I hadn't cut first and asked questions later. I resewed the lines and tried it back on again. Fit well, but the sleeves at the cuffs were too tight, I fixed this by hemming the cuffs a bit. Finally cut off the excess fabric.

Tried to think of a project for the leftover scraps, project 

ended up being "Fill up the trashcan".

Tried it back on, perfect fit! But we're not done, I want to add a little detailing too.

Such good lighting in my room.

I decided to fabric paint a little retro number on the front to give it a little more pizzazz. 7's my lucky number, so I went with that. I found a cool font I liked online, traced it onto a thick stock piece of paper and cut it out using my Xacto knife.

Finally found a use for all those Golf magazines sent to our house.

I then taped the heck out of the back of the number, to keep the paper nice and flush with the fabric while I was painting. Nothing worse then going through all this trouble only to have a little smudge do to sloppy paper-taping.

By thick stock paper I mean the cover to my sketchpad.

I used a light blue fabric paint, and when the paper was nice and tight with the fabric painted in dabbing motions along the cutouts. It's best to keep your paintbrush at a 90 degree angle with the fabric so no bristles accidentally slip under the paper.

Someone told me these 7's look like sassy raindrops.

Let it dry a bit to prevent smudges, and take the paper off. I then took a tooth pick and filled in little tiny holes I saw and to neaten up the edges of the numbers. You could probably also use a really tiny paintbrush or something else, but I'm poor and a toothpick is what I have :)

Little smudge at the top of 7 number 1, but what can you do?

Voila! Once the shirt is dry, wear it around town and tell people you're a softball superstar from the 70's.

Skulking in the background. He's lucky I didn't make him model the shirt.