After shirt – refashion

This newly-refashioned shirt was gifted from a wardrobe clear out and I pounced on it immediately: I liked the combination of colours and the frilly detail. But the minute I try it on, I can tell it is a ‘before’ – it is just too large for me. Plus, it’s shapeless, long, a little too fussy and unflattering to me in a big chest-y, no waist-y kind of way. And more depressingly, the colours look tired and dull.

But I’m determined to overlook these immediate issues and turn it into the After shirt – there’s a nice shirt in there somewhere waiting to be released. So I…

• take in the side seams just under the arm
• bias-bind the armholes
• create cap sleeves from the cuffs
• whip up a tie belt from the sleeves
• and then finally, shorten the hemline and curve it at the hip.

The fabric – I think it’s a polycotton, but there’s no labels at all – is a little cheap. It probably won’t age too well – it’s bobbled a bit already – so I really took my time to sewing neatly to try not to let the execution of the idea give the game away.

Lots of food for thought: next time I create a shaped hemline, I’ll make a facing  – that will make it sit flatter. No belt loops: make ’em too thin and they stick out and look cheap. And the application of the bias binding needs lots more thinking through: it works but shouldn’t show all the way round. All that from one shirt!

Repeated on Wardrobe Refashion.