Pinterest Challenge: Shirt Refashion

The vast majority of my life right now is lived either in jeans and a t-shirt, or something approaching pj's. So packing for a trip is a major stress. Especially when there's a good chance that trip will involve family photos.

So, along with addressing the pile of scarves, I also got to thinking about some of the tops in my 'too small' or 'rarely wear' piles.

I am not much of a seamstress. And it is not easy to find tutorials for ways to adjust clothing that is too small. But armed with a general idea of what I wanted thanks to this amazing top found (via Pinterest) at Of Dreams and Seams and the protection that if this absolutely failed I wasn't losing anything I was using, I went to work on a too small sweater and an old men's shirt.

Although it's been washed, this poor sweater has never been worn. When it still fit me, the weather where I lived generally wasn't cold enough. Now that it is - and I'm planning a trip to colder weather - it's uncomfortably tight. (It's a size small, which leads me to believe it's from the men's department, but it's been in my drawers for at least 8 years so who knows!)

Cut a line down the middle of the sweater. Fortunately, the weave of the fabric gave me an easy line to follow.

Apply bias tape to the raw edges to contain them. I'm not certain this was the right thing to do, but I didn't know how else to contain the raw edges and I had leftover black bias tape just sitting by the machine begging to be used.

I didn't quite plan for my stitching to be so obvious on the binding, but it was a happy accident because I actually like the little bit of shine the thread gives the bias tape edges. In fact, I top stitched along the bias tape several times to get a little more shine.

At this point, I had a finished-edged cardigan. But cutting it apart made just how small it was even more evident. So on with the plan! I took a quick measurement of about how far the edges were apart, and attacked my second top. Since my measurement said I needed about 9 inches of fabric to make the cardigan a top again, I cut an 11 inch wide piece from the back of the old shirt.

A quick double turn under to give the top a finished edge that's (hopefully) unlikely to unravel, and I was ready to try the pieces on together. And for the first time I began to wish I had a dress form. Holding the 'top' in place under a cardigan that wants to shift - and trying to pin it in place without pinning myself was a bit of a trick. Not impossible though. I managed to get everything pinned where I wanted it - and the whole mess taken off again without injury to me or the top.

I had to hem the bottom of the shirt piece - which was sadly a few inches too long, which meant saying good-bye to some of the interesting button detail I'd hoped to keep, then fed the whole thing through the machine to stitch the sweater to the red top. A little more hemming on the edges of the red piece (which wound up not needing to be as large as what I'd measured) to get the raw edges hidden and I have a fairly finished top.

Gotta take pictures in the daylight next time... 

I'm a little sad to have lost most of the button details on the red part - out of 6 in the original cut of fabric, I was only able to keep 1. I'm debating removing the lost buttons from the scraps of shirt and hand sewing them down the length of the center stripe (under the button that made it). I'm also toying with adding a button to the top/neck edge of each side of the cardigan. That would dress it up just a little more while the hand stitching would reinforce the machine stitches there. I think it's fine without, but the fabric got a little bulky where I had to sew over the collar of the sweater and I might feel a little more secure with a bit more stitching there.

At the moment, it feels a little more school teacher ish than I'd hoped. I don't know if buttons would change that, or if it's just my inexperience with cardigans or layering.

Unlike my incredibly supportive husband, I'm not quite certain I'm happy with this one. I guess I'll wear it a couple times before I judge completely. That said, it's a huge improvement over a sweater I've never worn and a piece of fabric I didn't know what else to do with (the front of the shirt will likely become a quilt type project some day).

This feels like the moment to set it aside and think before I act. I've got a lot of matching red buttons I could add if that's really what it needs, and a little jar of odd buttons, but maybe it's fine and I just need to come at it with fresher eyes.