Another cheap T-shirt transformation

I had so much fun turning a boring grey t-shirt into something chic a week or so ago, I bought some more of those cheap t-shirts at Joann's.  How could I resist ... they were $3 each!

And since they WERE only $3 each, this time I decided to combine two to make one finished shirt. I sketched a t-shirt shape and then drew and re-drew lines on it until I came up with this.

I lightly drew the shape I wanted on the lighter of the two shirts and then realized I really wanted the darker one on the outside (more flattering around my hips)... SO ... I put the darker shirt inside the lighter one, put a row of straight pins on the line I drew through both shirts, turned the two shirts inside out ...

cut away the dark shirt near the pins ...

and re-pinned the whole thing, now with the black shirt on the outside.

I thought I would want to jazz it up with some trim to make it look artsy but, alas, it only made it look dopey ... not the sleek sophisticated look I was going for. So nix the rick-rack! Tried some other trims, too.  They just looked wrong.  This design needs to be spare.

First the two pieces need to be joined with a straight stitch about 1/8" away from the cut edge.

Again, I turn the shirt inside out and trim away the excess green, leaving about 1/2" for safety.

Now I could simply do a zig-zag stitch over the cut edge, but I have this nice new machine with cool stitches, so I tried a few out.  This is the back side of my trials, since the black on black doesn't show up so well.

I chose the feather looking one on the right and here it is, very big, on my finished shirt.

I ended up just using a narrow hem on my serger for the neck.  Since I didn't have serger thread the exact color I needed, I filled 3 bobbins with regular sewing thread.  

I like it BUT, it is too tight around the hips, hmmmm. Godets to the rescue.

But, before I get to the godets ... I just want to warn you that the Jerzee brand "junior" fit shirts are really small.  This is a medium and mediums almost always fit loose on me. Oh, I did remember to wash these shirts first, too.  So, it shouldn't shrink any more.

To figure out how big the godets need to be, I open the side seams up, put the shirt back on and measured how large of a gap it makes.

I then cut pie slice shaped pieces (allowing for seams and hems) and put a faux cover stitch hem on them to look like the rest of the hems on the shirt.

Here's the back side.  I serged the edge first, then ran a gathering stitch very near the edge. That stitch gets pulled up to help the rounded hem fold evenly.  After pressing the hem, I machine stitch two rows to look like a cover stitch.

And now I can sew the godets in with the same tiny seam the whole shirt is made of, about 3/16ths of an inch. 

Can't wait to wear this one.


I think this will be the year of the t-shirt top for me.