long sleeve upcycled shirts for the boy

A while back I discovered the amazing site, Made (aka Dana Made It). Dana makes incredible clothes for her kids and she has a real knack for writing simple to follow instructions, detailing the steps involved. And photos. Lots of photos. And since I'm mostly a visual girl, that's a huge help. I fell in love with her 90-Minute Shirt and had to try it. This was my first attempt at creating my own pattern and the first try was unwearable. I tried cutting off the sleeves, but the arms were still too small. But I learned and kept at it and finally came up with a pattern that works well for Hugh. This involved a LOT of trial and error and making and remaking patterns based on an old cut-up onsie and t-shirts that currently fit him. Since then I've had a lot of fun with this. The basic idea is that you take a large or XL men's shirt and cut it up into four main pattern pieces: front, back and two arms. The trim is created from strips of knit fabric, either from another t-shirt or some purchased rib knit.

The beauty of this project is all in the design and the freedom of working with existing shirts. A large or XL men's shirt has plenty of fabric and there is something really liberating about cutting into something that no one wants. I've found some great designs and had a lot of fun deciding the layout of the new boy's shirt... you can do anything! You're not limited to putting the design on the front of the shirt... you can place it on the back, off-center, even on the arms. And I like that I can make shirts for Hugh that are more colorful and less "BOY" (ie, footballs and trucks and whatnot) than I might see at the store.

More to come soon, but here are some photos of what I've done so far:

The photos are in the order, from top to bottom, that they were made. I didn't include the one that didn't work at all, but you can see that the first two shirts are a little wonky on the neckline - one side of the envelope neckline comes down further onto the arm seam than the other. But by the time I got to the "luck" shirt on the bottom I had the process figured out.

Recently I've been working on more knit projects - more to come soon!