Tshirt Design Makeover Tutorial

I have several tshirts in my closet, but I don't wear them out in public. I wear them for cleaning, sleeping, or lounging around the house, but that's it. There's nothing flattering about them, except for that rare one I find that's actually cut for a woman. I have this one shirt, though, that I want to wear in public and I did wear it once but I can't do it again. Could anything be less flattering?

I'm a huge fan of my nephew's high school basketball team where these shirts are worn (his name and number are on the back) as a fun way to show your support for the team but, geez, I feel like a bum when I go out wearing a shirt like that. I kept thinking of how I could change it up and that's how I went from what you see above to this.

It wasn't that hard to do, either. Here's what I did.

I took a shirt that fits me the way I like and it also has a v-neck which I prefer. I put it down on top of the "big shirt" and traced it with chalk. I used tracing paper to trace the v-neckline onto the big shirt, too.

Then I took the rotary cutter and started cutting about 5/8" outside of my chalk lines. I used scissors to cut out the neck since I wasn't going through both layers of the fabric with the V.

Next, I used single fold bias tape to the neckline. I decided to go with white so it would become an accent feature. I applied the bias tape to the inside of the neckline, matching the edge of the tape to the edge of the neckline and sewing in the crease of the bias tape as you can see in the picture below.

I did the same thing around the hemline of the shirt, first sewing the tape to the inside of the shirt. Then I folded the tape to the outside of the shirt and stitched it very close to the folded edge as you can see in the picture below. When it was all sewn, I had this great neckline.

Before I sewed the side seams and shoulder seams, I marked 4 inches up from the bottom of the shirt so I could keep this area open to create my vents. I applied bias tape to the vents the same as the neckline and hemline.

Finally, I serged all along where I had cut with the rotary cutter: the sides, up to the underside of the sleeves and then from the upper part of the sleeve up across the shoulder to the neckline.

And, voila, I have a new shirt that is fitted and attractive and looks like it was made for a woman.

Here's the before and after.  What do you think?

Now I'm thinking about all of the tshirts I have that I actually would like to wear if I gave them a makeover, too. Give it a try. It's pretty easy to do and only took about an hour.