Almost on Purpose: Thrifty Thursday: Repurposing T-shirts Project #2. Petal Tee.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Thrifty Thursday: Repurposing T-shirts Project #2. Petal Tee.

Thank you for joining me on my journey to repurpose my ever-growing pile of old t-shirts. Last week, I started with a simple but fun necklace. It required no sewing, so it was an easy way to get started. Well, if you know me, I never like to do things the "easy way." Thanks to my hubby, I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be. At any rate, I decided to tackle the a cute, embellished tee. Here's my inspiration: the Pretty Petal Tee.

And... since I didn't have a cute little tee to start with, I had two projects to do: create the cute tee and add the petal embellishments. Now, do you get what I mean by I don't do things the easy way? This one did take ALL week. If you follow me on twitter, you may have seen my frustration with my over-eager backstitching ways. Yes, I know I will have to undo every seam. So WHY do I torture myself with such strong stitches. Again, I digress.

I used one of my other feminine t-shirts, as a guide to cut my new t-shirt. The sleeves proved to be more difficult, so you may notice that it has a slight puff sleeve (which I think turned out kind of cute... a happy accident). The only real frustration was the neckline. I knew I should have made it a double layer tee but could not bring myself to use the only other gray t-shirt I have in my pile... a Dallas Cowboys t-shirt. Yes, I give you permission to call me CRAZY because I was, at that point!! I gave up for two days until I had the idea to try a decorative stitch with a raw edge.

I can always blame my uneven stitching to my astigmatism, but Attempt #1 was really bad. Yes, the back side of the shirt was the original "front" of the old t-shirt. I just turned it inside out (hardly noticeable, when it's done).

As you can see, I had to use black thread. From my first week of the project, I naively vowed not to buy ANY more notions for this project. Nice... I am so NOT loving that decision right now. Well, I guess it turned out ok.

Now, finally onto the petal part. If you look at the inspiration piece, she had a flower die cut. Me? Ah, nope. Again, I couldn't break my promise and buy something. I made do with cutting out circles. The circles were FAR from perfect. Thankfully, the petals seemed to be pretty forgiving.

It was very simple to make the petal out of a circle (fold in half and half again, which makes a triangular shape). Place the petal in the desired location and stitch from the back.

Making the petals... super easy. Figuring out where to put them all... not the easiest. Oh, and please ignore my stained hands. I had to install training wheels and fix a bike chain today, and I couldn't get out all the grease stains.

This leads me to a tip: Sew each petal separately and don't try to be too symmetrical. Yes, it might seem a bit tedious to stitch, knot, and cut each time you put on a petal. However, it makes things SO much easier if you decide to remove a petal here or a petal there. If you kept it all as one stitch, you could not undo one petal without unraveling other stitches. I may or may not have learned this tip during this project {cough, cough}.

So, here's my Thrifty Thursday project, a petal tee!