Finishing details…

Remember this? I made it ages ago from one of my grandad’s old shirts. I took it in, reset the sleeves and made a new collar.

I reused as much as I could, these bits were the cuffs. Faffy, but cute.

But I didn’t have enough to make any facings. I decided to leave it because I’m lazy, but mum really liked it so I gave it to her. That was ages ago and she hasn’t really worn it because the snipped edges flap up sometimes and look messy.

Cue 6 months later and 10 minutes with some bias binding…

…and it looks so neat now. The miracle of bothering to finish things in a tidy way never ceases to amaze me!
Beccy

Crazy sleeves to cap sleeves…

The college I work at has a fashion department and not surprisingly I’m quite friendly with the members of staff who work there. Every year they have a sale of old student work but inevitably some things don’t sell and those in the know get to rifle through the pile and take their pick.

I got this shirt and a few other things too – boy, does it have crazy sleeves but in every other respect it fits fine.

All I did was rip out the sleeves (which were huge, that’s about two feet of sleeve right there) and follow Rosie’s easy peasy tutorial on Craftster for making cap sleeves.
And this is the result:

Much cuter and more wearable!
Beccy

Thrifty man’s shirt refashion with a mini tutorial

I made this cute shirt-for-that-meeting-with-HR-I-have-next-week…
…from this big old man’s shirt…

Here’s how I did it!
First I removed the sleeves and unpicked the side seams, leaving the shoulder seams intact.

Then I put it inside-out on the dressform and pinned like crazy. I had to add bust darts to the side and front and back darts too to make it fit the form.

I also pinned the sides to make sure the darts were in the right position. I then sewed the darts in place and pressed them flat. This is the time to try on the shirt and check those darts – if they are wrong you’ll have to take the whole shirt apart to put them right!

When I was sure the darts were right I sewed up the side seams. I measured on myself, from shoulder to hem, how long I wanted the shirt to be and transferred these measurements to the shirt. Then I hacked off the bottom hem.

I knew I wanted the sleeves to hit my elbows and that I wanted to turn the cuffs back, so I measured from my shoulder to my elbow and cut the sleeve accordingly, following the line of the existing seam. I then pinned the sleeve to the shirt and used tailors chalk to mark the new armhole. Because I wanted puffed sleeves I gathered the top part of the sleeve and tacked it before pinning it to the shirt. I then pinned and sewed in the sleeves backwards. This meant that the split in the cuff would be at the front instead of at the back and allow easy movement (and maybe look cute?)

 

The cuffs were obviously too small to fasten the buttons at my elbow so I folded them back and pressed them before sewing them down following the line of the existing stitching on the cuff. You can’t quite see on the photo but the cuffs each had two buttonholes so Mr. Man could have the option of using cufflinks. I sewed the extra buttons from the bottom of the shirt onto the extra buttonholes to make it a design feature.
Now I have a shirt for that meeting I ought to try to look smart for (work attire usually consists of jeans and a jumper at this time of year – us ceramicy folk have to wear clothes we don’t mind getting mucky every five minutes)
Beccy

Men's shirt refashion #1 tutorial (sort of)

I was given a bag full of men's shirts (I'm well known as thrifty/cheap) so I have set myself the task of refashioning them all - the 70's double-knit acrylic is worrying me slightly, so I chose the nicest one to start with!



Stupidly, I didn't realise that men's shirts have nowhere for your boobs to go. I thought to myself, "this'll be an easy refashion, just take it in a bit" *Insert deranged laugh here* I'm glad I had my trusty dressform to work with or this could have been a real nightmare. Next time it'll be much easier though, since I know what I'm doing. Sorry I forgot to do a proper tutorial, but this is how I did it.



I used nearly every scrap of fabric available for this top. I first removed the collar, cuffs and sleeves and had a good look. I raised the back, took in the sides, and added darts.



The bottom half of the sleeves became the Peter Pan collar. I used a template I drew specifically for this shirt. If you have a dressform, or a willing friend, cut the neckline as low as you want, then put the shirt on the form/friend, mark the centre of the back, and pin a piece of tracing paper around one half of the neck. Trace the edge of the neckline marking the centre front (or as far as you want the collar to go) and centre back. Remove the paper and draw the collar you want. For a Peter Pan collar, this will look like an upside-down comma (,) Cut it out and pin it to the shirt, checking it fits well and that the centre line is straight. Place the template with the centre line on the fold of your chosen fabric so when you open it out you have the full collar. When you cut, remember to add seam allowance. Cut 2 and add interfacing to one of them. Sew right sides together leaving a gap so you can turn it right side out. Snip all the curves, turn it the right side out, press and sew up the hole. Topstitch around the edge of the whole thing and pin it to your shirt. Hand sew with the most invisible stitches you can, and you're done :)


The cuffs became the scalloped placket (see the two little buttons at the bottom? They hide the old buttonholes :) To do this, I drew a template and made it in exactly the same way as the collar, minus the interfacing. I unpicked the buttonhole placket for the length of the scalloped piece and pinned the piece in place. It looked a bit boring, so I dug into my ribbon stash and found a piece of broderie Anglais edging to finish it off.
When I took in the sides I made the armholes smaller and reinserted the sleeves with a bit of puff. Finally, I moved the breast pocket to the hip. I kept the length as it was so it would be tunic-y and the pocket is so low you can tuck the shirt into jeans without seeing it.