alter my clothes

I got a dress form last weekend, so now I can alter my clothing without awkwardly stabbing myself with pins! Yaaaay!

• 99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Trim, and Tie Your T-Shirt into Something Special
• Sweater Surgery: How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters

Here’s a bag I made for aoede9 out of (you guessed it) tshirts. It was pretty simple, and I used one of the stencils I made before.

Nothing too exciting happened. It came out pretty well—no complaints here, haha.

After I made my bento lunch last night, I realized my containers were too big for any of my bento bags! I decided to make a new (bigger) one out of scraps from my button up t-shirt project and an old t-shirt (for lining). I screen printed it with the screen from the purse I made before, and it turned out pretty well!

I made this bag for my sister-in-law for Christmas out of two of my old shirts. I also screen printed it myself! I was very tempted to keep it, but I don’t use purses much—I’ll definitely be using that print again, though!

The next project I’m working on is a hoodie. I found a neglected Aeropostle hoodie (XXL) in one of my classrooms one day with a broken zipper. It seemed like it had been there for a while, and I had a great idea, so I decided to borrow it… forever. >.>

• Replaced the broken zipper (I had to special order the new one ><).
• Tailored it so that it’s now a size medium instead of XXL.

• Shorten the sleeves OR make some kind of built in glove thing (I haven’t decided yet).
• Decorate! It’s brown with light blue accents, so I’m going to sew a design on the inside with light blue fabric and then cut away the brown hoodie part so the light blue shows through. I haven’t decided what design I want to do yet.

• More tailoring? I’m not sure if I really need this, but there are a few places I think I could tailor more.
• I might want to do something cute with the hood (like make ears or something XD), but I’m not sure yet.
• Some sort of cute zipper pull? This is really at the way bottom of my priority list, though.

So I’ve been getting a lot of good ideas from the internet and some books that I have about recycling old t-shirts. Here’s something I made for my boyfriend for our 6 month anniversary. It’s 100% t-shirts—one of mine and one of his. I think it looks really cute :3 but maybe a little too cute for a guy >.>

I tried screen printing for the first time today.

It was ridiculously easy—like, literally easy to the point of absurdity. My only challenge was thinking of what kind of design I wanted to do and finding all the right materials. The screen is reusable, too!

This might be my new favorite thing.

I’m going to wait for it to dry overnight and then iron over it to set it. You can see the cardboard I put in the middle the shirt to make sure the ink didn’t get on the other side, haha >.>

I finished my shirt today finally! It didn’t take as long as I thought it would—I’m just lazy :)

Anyway, I think it turned out pretty well. The only thing I want to keep working on is the neck. The button up shirt I used was too big for me, and I didn’t take that into account when I combined the pieces, so the collar doesn’t lay flat, and it’s driving me crazy. I might also do some screen printing, but that’ll probably be after I fix the collar (which will probably be after Thanksgiving).

I haven’t been working on any new projects, but I did get a really awesome book the other week. It’s called Generation T, and it’s probably one of the most amazing books ever. The next time I go home, I want to bring back all of my old tshirts so I can start on some of the project (the only tshirts I brought with my to college are ones I actually like).

I worked a little on my shirt this weekend (finally). I got the collar and button parts sewn on, so all I need to do are the cuffs and pocket (and some cosmetic things), and I’ll be done and can move on to embellishing it!

The front stretched a little where I sewed the buttons on, so I have to figure out a way to stretch the rest of the shirt or something (which is kind of good because it’s a little short), but otherwise it came out pretty well.

The picture is kind of what it should look like when I’m all done (nothing is sewn on this picture—just cut out and laid on top of the base shirt).