Craft Day/DIY

The hotel is dark this entire week which means CRAFT TIME FOR SARAH!!!! It's pretty exciting I know. I've decided that I need to work on at least 1 thing every day this week, big or small. Last night started things off nicely with finishing a hat for a friend of mine. He knows that he's getting a hat but he doesn't know what it looks like so I won't be putting it on here just yet. All that's left is to tie in the ends (blah).

Today I slept in till 11! Pretty scandalous for me. So it was right to work upon awakening. To get into the swing of things I decided to finally do a DIY from my "future projects" board on Pinterest. Too often I want to try something I see on there and then forget or just don't do it. So with great determination I went to choosing my project. Upon scanning my pins I knew which one I would conquer.

Just a little large!! Time to fix that!

Years ago in high school I managed to convince this kid to give me a shirt of this that I adored. It's a men's XL Tee with a picture of Jim Morrison, of The Doors, on it and the lyrics to People Are Strange on the back. I remember being obsessed with it back then but to this day have no idea how I was able to coerce him to give it to me. It's still one of my favorite tees but I don't wear it for much other than sleeping since it's so big on me. It was time to up-cycle it.

Enter Trash to Couture, the super awesome blog where I found this great tutorial on turning a large t-shirt into a cute dolman tee. As a fan of the dolman tee I knew this was the project for me.

 
Per the directions I went to cutting the sleeves first. Since I've worked with T-shirts before I was more than aware of the fact that cotton will curl as soon as you cut it. So I decided it would be better to measure the sleeve in my arm first then sew the diagonals and cut the excess off afterwards. It made sewing it SO much easier!

No curling here!!

I did the same measuring on my hips before doing the gathering portion of the tutorial. I didn't want to sew it too small or not small enough and have to redo it over and over again. Once i marked how far to sew in I guest-timated that starting 4 inches above the hem would be sufficient.  Lucky for me it was!

 There was really no method here. I simply tucked the fabric as I sewed it. Easy Peasy!

When it came to sewing from the gathering point to the arm I found myself doing a sew-and-check pattern. I would sew it then try it on and sew it again until I thought it looked right. It didn't take too many try's to get it the way I wanted.






I switched things up even more by doing the first step in the tutorial last. I know, I'm a rebel. That way, again, I could cut little by little until it looked the way I wanted it too. I like tees that fall off one shoulder so I prefer a bit of a wider neck.









FINISHED!! And I looooove it! This was SO easy to do and I can't wait to try it on all my other huge shirts!!

There are tons of other really great DIYs on that blog too that I hope to try eventually. That gal is so crafty!

The rest of my day was spent working on a fleece tie blanket to sell on my Etsy page as well as working on a flannel shirt that I had started for myself back at the beginning of the year. Most of the work was already done, it was just a matter of getting the sleeves finished, put on, and hemming the bottom. Such little work yet I'd put it off for this long! Shameful. And even though I wasn't able to finish it today it's now much closer to being done and I'm determined to get it done this week. Hopefully I'll even get to wear it now that the chilly weather is once again upon us.

So there you have it! One crafty Monday in the books! Hopefully the rest of my week will be just as productive!