Monday, November 26, 2007

Refashioned Shirt

What I'm wearing is something I made for myself out of a ruined t-shirt in one of my favorite colors. I made the mistake of actually washing up the kitchen while wearing this and some of the cleaner made some unrecoverable bleachy type of spots.

I started out this refashioning project by adding to the bleach spots that ruined this cool green tee. A few bleach spots is yuck. A lot it turns out is yum. This was accomplished by propping up the shirt on a cardboard box in the backyard and flinging bleach undiluted via old toothbrush at the shirt. I know that would have been a good picture, but I was too busy flinging bleach around. Then I soaked it in anti-chlor (to stop the bleaching which continues until your fabric disappears), washed it, and took it to the sewing lair. bwaahahaaa.The first sewing was turning out the hems of the neckline, sleeves and bottom. All I did here was to turn the hems outwards folding them back onto the shirt. This shortened the sleeves and bottom a bit, and changed the neckline to something a bit more comfortable. The stitch I used looks like a zigzag, but it is a mending zig zag, each zig is comprised of a bunch of teeny tiny stitches. Oh, and I remembered to us a knit jersey needle (yeah me!), which works so much better when sewing t-shirts. Sewing slowly and using a lot of pins on these hems resulted in no puckers gathers or lumps.Now it was time to pin on the patches I bought from leethal. I decided to give them a little more oomph by giving them some other fabric to perch upon and relate to. One piece has upholstery fabric (this one by the coffee), one has cotton-poly, and the last has silk. All of these are recycled fabric scraps.Before stitching I made sure to try on the shirt to ensure no obvious placement problems had arisen. Those of you with breasts know what I'm talking about here.I used the same mending zig zag that isn't a zigzag stitch as I did on the hems.
I realized I didn't like how light the bleach spots were, so I obsessively colored them all in with a sharpie pen. Now I like it better with this color.



So here is how the shirt looks on the floor.
And here is how it looks on me. I have no idea what that expression on my face is meant to convey. I think I was very near to actually smiling, but who knows. The result, very comfy, unique and me.



5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love changing clothing to fit my personality.
this shirt turned out very neat!

Suzie Ridler said...

I LOVE it! Oh what fun you're having. Isn't it great when mistakes turn into art like that? I wish I could wear natural tones like that, they look so good on you.

I love your House of Mom quilt too! Creative genius you are...

gkgirl said...

so cute and comfy and creative!

jenclair said...

I love it! Last year I managed to get bleach on one of my favorite shirts, and I put some patches over the spots using some left over scraps from a fabric I loved.

Since bleach always manages to make itself at home with whatever I'm wearing, next time I'll try your "all over" bleach spot method.

Jaye said...

Love the shirt and it looks great on you!