Two old make one new....

Since having our daughter almost three years ago, we've been fortunate enough to have friends who are more than willing to pass along clothes to cover her little body....  Now, being the thrifty mom that I am, I am very, very appreciative of what we've been given.  It has made clothing her older brothers so much more cost efficient.  And as any parents of boys know, hand-me-downs are few and far between and so buying new boy clothes is a definite must.

Anyone who knows my children personally, knows that they are little trees.  Oftentimes when I do receive clothes of the girl-variety, the shirts are too short.... I have a size 5/6 top-wearing almost three year old.  It gets a little tough at times, she'll wear a shirt a few times and then it's too small.  So easy solution:  keep the smalls, stained, torn.... then de-construct and re-construct.


Here's a quick little tutorial for taking a stained top and a short top and making something cute and sweet!


Supplies needed:


2 shirts (given by 2 lovelies named A & A)
sewing machine (or not, hand sewing or fabric glue would work too)
scissors
coordinating or contrasting thread
buttons, embroidery floss
and YOUR CREATIVITY

Decide which shirt you'll be slicing and dicing.... in this case, I used the pink shirt for piecing over the white (stained) shirt.  

 First, I cut 2 long strips from the back of the pink shirt.  Then layered them one on top of the other and sewed them 1/2" in along both long edges to the middle front of the white shirt.

Then I cut 8 wonky (ye-ah, it's a word) circles and layered 2 together, spaced them evenly running down the middle of the pink strip.  I pinned and sewed them on in an X pattern.  In the middle of the X's, I sewed 4 different white buttons on using pink embroidery floss.  Then I cut the outer 1/2" into fringe along both long edges.

Here's the finished shirt being modeled by my cute little monkey.... "Tah-dah, momma!"....

The possibilities are endless for this quick and easy project.... ruffles, flowers, rick-rack, lace, use whatever you have.... and the nice thing about a t-shirt project is that you don't need to finish the raw edges, you've gotta love that!

Have a fantastic day everyone   ;)