National Sewing Month/Upcycled T-shirt Dress

Upcycled T-shirt Dress

1.  Take a t-shirt and cut the bottom half off. This shirt is a size 5T

2.  Find 3 or 4 t-shirts that are larger than a 5 T.  Adult and teen shirts will work well.

3.  Cut the larger t-shirts into 2- 3 inch strips.  It is fun it the shirts have screen printing or patterns on it.

4.  Sew the strips together in the pattern you want the skirt of the dress to be.  I sewed wrong sides together so that the seams would be on the outside of the shirt.  You can do it either way.  I like the look of the "ruffle like" seams on the outside.

5.  Measure the top shirt that you have already cut.  Fold the sewn together strips in half.  Take the measure ment of the top shirt and add 1/2 inch seam allowance and cut your striped skirt to that measurement.  If you want an a-line skirt, start with that measurement at the top, and graduate out.

6.  Sew the skirt side together.  Pin it to the top shirt and sew together.  Knit doesn't fray, so you can leave the bottom hem alone, or use the bottom of a t-shirt that is already trimmed for the last strip on the skirt.

I added a little t-shirt strip swirl flower to the top of this dress for a fun accent.

 

4th of July

Tie Dye Fun

 

So we started with our socks and bandanas.  Traditional tie dying. 

On to a t-shirt.If you band your shirt like this it will end up having a strip effect like this.

THEN....we got creative.  We put various colors of dye in spray bottles.  We masked some fun patriotic shapes with sticky foamies and I even cut fun shapes out of contact paper with my Silhoutte die cut machine.
We sprayed around the stencils to create a spatter of color and then revealed the white shape underneath.

  Lots of fun.  The kids can't wait to wear them for the 4th.  We made our own dye with Rit dye, but Wal-mart sells a fun kit by Tulip for both of these methods.  It runs about $10, but you get 4-5 colors.

Amy