How to make a T shirt dress

Jo Anne Yada shows you how to take two old T-shirts and turn them into a flattering T-shirt dress. Hooray for arts and crafts.

Once upon a time, there lived a girl who had an idea. She cut her favorite Horrorpops Tshirt, thinking she will one day reconstruct it. Sadly, the girl broke the needle on her sewing machine and was too lazy to fix it and the shirt lay buried underneath a pile of fabric remnants. But this story does have a happy ending, as she (OK, I) made into a dress.

Craft materials you’ll need:

• Tshirt with design
• strip of jersey fabric in any thickness or pattern
• Tshirt which is way too big for you to wear as a shirt
• sewing machine (and a serger if you got one)
• thread, duh

I started with my cropped Tshirt, a 3X red Tshirt, and a pillowcase made from jersey cotton. I chose the large red Tshirt because it’s already hemmed at the bottom and along the sides. Who doesn’t love shortcuts?

Cut the red shirt into a skirt. This one had a bit of gathering on the front, which I thought it would look cute on the back of the T-shirt dress.

Cut the striped fabric into a strip and pin to the black shirt, right sides together. Sew all the way around, and sew the striped strip closed in the back.

Thoroughly pin the skirt to the striped fabric, right sides together. Remember, pins are your friends!

Sew all the way around, attaching the skirt to the shirt. In mine, I created gathers to give the skirt movement. I don’t claim to be an expert seamstress (in fact, I had to go back and fix my seams which is why I’m so thankful that God created seam rippers) but you know what looks good. For a more tight-fitting skirt, or A-line skirt, cut the fabric to the correct shape. You may want to use a real life pattern.

When I put my new dress on for the first time, the waistband was a bit too low. Good thing I had room in the sleeves to take it up. I stitched along the dotted lines to remove some of that large ‘man’ sleeve to make it more flattering both in the sleeves and the waist. I also trimmed the neckline some more.

Crafting tips:

• Pins are your friends!
• When pinning the skirt, start with 4 pins in the front, back, and each side and then fill in the spaces with more pins to make it even
• Add other embellishments like a zipper, lace, bows, wear with a tulle skirt, etc.