T-shirt Refashioned

I finally did it! Saw lots of the refashion tutorials around the blogland and made many mental notes to do them one day. But, it's kinda scary to cut up a good piece of T-shirt and mess up the whole thing. What if I cut out too much? What if my final product is worse than the original T-shirt? What ifs..what ifs... These goes through my mind alot and most T-shirt here in Singapore are quite expensive. At least, for me to cut them up.

Well, then I decided to just do it. It surely liberated me and I"m game for more : ) Cut off the sleeves and used them as ruffles for the neck line and sleeve hems. Didn't refer to any particular tutorials but just goes with what I have.  Here's the short tutorial below if you want to try.

Instruction
1. Find a long sleeve T-shirt. I bought 2 long sleeves white spandex T-shirt at $10 a piece from This Fashion.

2. Cut off the sleeves at 3/4.  I've used my old T-shirt blouse as a rough gauge.

3. Open up the sleeves by cuting away the side seams.

4. Use a ruler and measure out 1" strips before you cut them all out. We will not be using the sleeve finished hem.

5. Using the widest stitch width on your sewing machine and increase the tension, sew the strip individually in the middle.  I've used stitch width 4 and tension 6.  Do for all the strips.

6. Afterwhich, you can pull the bobbin thread so that the strip become ruffles-liked. 

7. Pin them around the neckline using pins. Start from the shoulder seam area and make the round to the other shoulder seam. Just lay the next strip after the first one ends.  I've also inserted a piece of lace on top of the centre neckline.

8. Do the same for the sleeve hem. Start from the side seam area and move round it. Pin in place.

9. Using the normal stitch length and tension, sew around the neckline to attach the ruffles.  Sew in the middle of the strip, right on top of the earlier gathered stitch.  You can trim away these extra threads after you have finished sewing the ruffles.  Go very slowly so that it curves around the neckline.  Before I sew the ruffles, I use a straight stitch to sew the piece of lace on.

10. Do the same for the sleeves, except that the area is much smaller and you will need to be careful not to sew the sleeve shut! The finished T-shirt. Maybe next time, I'll be more adventurous and go for some colours. What do you think?

close up on the sleeve hem