I’ve been saving a couple of Paul’s old shirts to refashion for a couple of years now. By ‘old’ I don’t necessarily mean worn, just that they didn’t fit or he just didn’t like them.

The first one I tackled was a dark blue shirt that I’d originally fancied trying to make into shorts. Now I had simpler plans. I’m liking these chambray and faded denim shirts in fashion right now. This shirt has metal buttons and the blue might fade nicely with a bit of bleach. Hmm.

Step one was to simply make it fit me, and the most challenging bit was to redo the sleeves. I used a shirt I’d designed and made back in the 90s as a template, since I still have the pattern pieces, then checked the shape against a commercially-produced shirt.

It was more fluke than expertise, but I was pretty chuffed when the sleeve fit the body perfectly.

Working with the dress model definitely helps, especially when you get sick of trying things on. Though I always check that what I’m doing will work on me too, before doing anything I can’t reverse.

The last step, which I did on Monday, was the bleaching. This produced some surprises. The shirt bleached back to a lighter shade, but I also got these splash dots and amoeba like shapes:

Which I decided I don’t mind, since none of them were in embarrassing places:

The next refashion was meant to be another sleeveless shirt, inspired by a previous shirt to sleeveless-top project that worked really well.

But when I saw the shirt sans sleeves on the dress form I didn’t like it. A bit too country’n’western for me. Also, I could see that the darts it would need at the armholes to fit well wouldn’t suit the more casual style of the shirt. So, bolstered by the success of the previous shirt sleeve redo, I trimmed the sleeves and put them back on.

I like it, though I’m hoping it hasn’t headed in the other direction – looking like part of a uniform, especially a school uniform. It may need a touch of punk. Perhaps some skull buttons.

The last refashion of the day involved getting further away from the original shirt-y ness of a shirt. I started with a quite generous cheesecloth shirt:

The aim was to end up with something between this and this.

I cut off the sleeves, then chopped off the top quite low to remove the yoke at the back. The new neckline and armholes were very simple shapes, width and length estimated from other garments, and the sides were just a matter of taking the body in with a little flare at the bottom to make room for hips. I’d shortened the other two shirts, but because I’d cut so much off the top of this one I didn’t need to here, so I kept the shirt tails and saved myself some hemming.

Then I tried it on and discovered that it didn’t look as good on me as it did on the dress form. I’d kept the pleats at the back of the yoke, placing them at the neck. This meant the back poofed out in a strange way. From the front the silhouette was all very square, and after trying some belts with it I decided gathering at the waist wouldn’t work so well with the button front.

So on the back I mirrored the pleat at the waist:

And used the same device at the front:

The resulting top is… interesting. Certainly feminine and shapely. I’d always planned to dye it because there were two little stains on the front, but instead I bleached them out so I could leave it white.

I have a couple of garments left to refashion: the black skirt (which I’m not sure is worth the effort), the infinity dress (into skirt or dress?), the velvet dress (intimidating) and the Maiocchi dress (perhaps I can simply let out the seams).