But Make It Fashion

I love t-shirts. Like, a lot. Were it not for the fact that I’m supposed to be a “professional” I’d rock t-shirts every day (confession: I’m wearing one at work today but I dressed it up because I can totally do that because professional!). But I also understand that t-shirts can be boring day in and day out. So I started looking for ways to dress them up. I found a bunch of different tutorials and I decided to start with the easiest one. Because...I’m me, and I was probably going to screw this up. Let’s see how badly this went.

Supplies

T-shirt

Elastic

Thread

Sewing machine

Blind hope

Step One

Cut the back off of your t-tshirt. Not the whole back, mind you. Just a section where you’ll add your elastic. This will vary depending how low you want your t-shirt back to go. I can’t ever go without a bra (sigh) so I made sure to leave my cut high enough that my bra strap wouldn’t show.

As always, be careful when you’re cutting. This time I didn’t cut myself, but I did cut a part of the shirt that I didn’t mean to. I’m going to pretend it’s intentional and FASHION. Don’t tell anyone, okay?

Step Two

Cut your elastic to fit across the back of your t-shirt. Here’s where I mad my first (second?) mistake. I didn’t account for the fact that elastic is, you know, stretchy. So I measured the amount of elastic that was necessary to stretch across the shirt.

However, because I didn’t think about the stretchy factor my elastic kind of gaps, as you’ll see in the finished product.

Step Three

Sew the elastic into the shirt. This was, once again, more complicated than I anticipated. T-shirt material does not behave the same way as cotton so I had to account for that while I was sewing.

Step Four

Enjoy your creation!

Like I said, you may want to pull your elastic tighter when you’re working on this project. Mine is kind of gappy. The good news is, I still have plenty of elastic left over so I can try this agin and see if I can make it tighter.

Step Five

Wear sunscreen. I mean this is always good advice but this shirt can give you some really weird tan lines if you’re not careful.

What creations have you turned t-shirts into? Let me know!