Refashioning: Shirt into Sleeveless Top

This morning I awoke to the end of New Dress A Day. I have become completely addicted to the blog, and will miss starting my blog reading each day by hopping over to see what refashioning magic Marisa has performed overnight (though I’m sure there’ll be plenty more to see on her blog once she’s caught up on some sleep).

I’ve been wearing my own Marisa-inspired refashioned clothing. Yesterday I wore the striped skirt I made out of shorts and today I’m wearing shorts I added a waistband to. (I can’t believe how much more comfortable and flattering they are!) A few weeks ago I took the next step: I rifled through the clothing at one of the smaller op shops here, telling myself I was looking for clothes I could scavenge for fabric. I found two pieces. One was this shirt, found in the mens shirts rack despite being a womenswear shirt.

It was the fabric that caught my eye. Flowery enough to be feminine, but not overly bright and blossomy. The shirt was big, but I’d learned from New Dress A Day that buying big allows room to explore a variety of ways to change a garment. I found myself pinning and tucking instead of chopping it up for fabric.

The pockets came off first:

Then the sleeves:

I laid a shirt and sleeveless top on top to get an idea where to start trimming, then off came the sides:

Trying it on, I could see that the armholes now gaped a lot. This wasn’t surprising. I’d done patternmaking way back in my 20s and knew about the sort of shaping challenge boobs present. I sewed some darts:

Then trimmed some fabric off the bottom as it seemed a bit long now.

And then… it was done:

The other garment I picked up at the op shop is a simple cotton drawstring beach skirt that also caught my eye because of the fabric colour and print. I’m planning to make a top out of it. But I suspect I’m going to have to swear off refashioning after that, because I’m running out of room in my wardrobe. Which is ironic, since this all started a few months ago when I started culling clothes from my wardrobe because I was running out of room.