A ‘jeep promo’ T of my late brothers, turned inside out, and added to with lace knit and tie labels.
Neck Close-up. Base of lace knit, narrow strips of men’s ties attached at lap over closure on a V neckline.
OH OH OH am I having FUN with the concept of ‘Re-Birthing’ T’s – or ‘Up-Cycle’ or ‘Re-Cycle’ …whatever you wanna call it! One could also call it ‘Slap Happy Sewing’ IMHO .
Lapping to stitch center front after stabilizing.
I started with an XL T-shirt given to me by my sister-in-law of my late brother’s. It was for their beloved hobby of jeeping. It had screen-printed info o the front AND back. I used the wrong side of the Front for the outside of my Front. For some reason, I had cut it up the center front when starting the project months ago, then decided to stitch it back together. I did that by stabilizing the underlap (right front) with Straight Fusible Stay Tape, then lapping the left front over to cover the tape. Then I use the serpentine stitch on my Brother Quattro. Oh – and I had cut a fairly low V-neck front.
Serpentine Stitch and setting adjustments.
I’ve inserted a photo of the serpentine stitch I used showing the length and width adjustments. It seems I usually lengthen the default settings of decorative stitches – for what it’s worth.
I think too many don’t realize that you can adjust the look of stitches by adjusting length and width – so PLAY with that!
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Covering original printing on back of T below the yoke created with an opened up short sleeve to cover imprinting above what you see in the photograph.
Here you see how I created the BACK of the top. The right side of the back was used as the outside in this case because I had the idea of utilizing the bounty of my bag of neck tie labels I have been saving. The top of the back has a covering ‘yoke’ created from opening up one of the short sleeves of the top and laying it right over the Back at the upper edge. It was plenty big – YEAH! Then I just zigzagged on the tie labels after fusing them with Vilene – my favorite Japanese VERY lightweight paperbacked fusible tape. I used YLI Wonder Thread – in clear, a monofilament thread in my Needle (regular poly thread in bobbin) and lowered the upper tension so as to not see the bobbin thread peaking up. A Stretch Needle in size 75 was used for all sewing.
HEMS: When cutting the top from the original T, I simply set the hemLINE on my pattern (Londa’s Terrific T) on the finished hem edge of the original T – that way I knew I didn’t have to sew in a hem! 🙂
In addition to the olive lace knit fabric I used for the base of the ‘collar’ and the sleeves, I also had a sheer black netting (knit) which I attached to the raw edge of the sleeve hems – a double layer about 1 ” wide, then ‘finished’ with another tie label.
Inspiration Top in Ready-To-Wear.
I’m including as well a photo snapped of the ‘inspiration’ top I found in my ‘snoop shopping’ (Like me on Facebook to track my snoop shopping escapades!). Honestly, I was making this top pretty late at night at my recent Retreat in Danville, so I was too tired to ‘think through’ how to put the collar on, crossing in the front as it was done, so I had attached it to the right front (width of collar to the right side of the froth V), stitched it on in a 1:1 ratio around the neckline, right sides together, then when I got back to the place where the top of the Collar had been attached, I stopped, clipped into the Collar seam allowance, and started stitching it to the OUTSIDE, then let the edge of the Collar just overlap. I topstitched the left front of the Collar down to the V line, then added the Tie Labels. Then I cut the shape you see to the extra at the front. The Collar had started about 10″ wide, and the tie strips and black knit netting were various widths around 1″ wide. You can see that I zig zagged them on with Khaki thread mostly. It really doesn’t matter.
After the Collar, I stitched the side seams, matching hemlines at the lower edge. Since the right side of the T was used for my BACK and the wrong side of the T was used for my FRONT, the cover hem used on the original T was different on each side – but that is just interesting i decided. I inserted the stitched up sleeves into the armHOLE using my favorite method shown to me by a Polish woman years ago. That method is included in my new 3 disc DVD on sewing knits: Stretching Your Knit Sewing Know-How. You also receive it as a THANK you for signing up for my email list – which you can do at the front page of my website: http://www.londas-sewing.com
Watch for MORE of these type of ‘slap happy creative sewing T”s upcoming! I’m stitching them like mad in prep for an all-day class I’m teaching on them at the upcoming American Sewing Guild Annual Conference in San Diego in July. Find out more at this link: http://www.asg.org/files/conference/ASGConf15_Classes.pdf