Secret Crafting & T-shirt Refashioning

There’s been a bit of crafting going on this last week, but most of it I can’t show because I’m making presents. There’s been some knitting. There’s been some weaving:

There was some dyeing, too. I over-dyed an olive green skirt black (sorry, no pics) and this yarn:

Over-dyed blue:

There was also some more wardrobe culling. When the weather warms up I switch the position of my skivvies and long sleeve cotton knits with my t-shirts for better accessibility, and I finally got around to this last week. I seemed to have an awful lot of t-shirsts, so I sorted and counted them. I was a bit shocked. Somehow I’d managed to end up with 51 – not counting sleeveless ones and singlet tops.

I say ‘somehow’, but I know the source of my t-shirt excesses: conventions and holidays. I always pick up a couple in either situation. I’ve learned to be fussy about holiday t-shirts. I won’t buy them unless I really like them. I’m learning to be picky with con t-shirts, but the pile of ugly, oversized con shirts I don’t wear is evidence that I was once an easy victim to the ‘had a good time so must buy the shirt’ compulsion.

Most of the con t-shirts ended up in the gym/painting pile. Of the holiday shirts culled, this one had potential. I’m a sucker for anything chocolate themed. I’d bought a 1XL size because it was the smallest they had, but though I didn’t mind the bagginess, the material was surprisingly thick, which made it a bit hot for summer.

After searching the internet for ideas, I realised that the thicker material made it good skirt material. So I got chopping:

Side seams done, I considered how to do the waist. Unfortunately, my overlocker doesn’t do hems and my sewing machine’s stretch stitch makes horribly puckered seams. I usually get around this by overlocking on a tubular waistband of ribbing. But I didn’t have any ribbing. Looking around at the other culled clothes, I spotted the solution: a too-small-over-the-boobs sleeveless top I was going to cut up for rags:

Waistband added, and I haz new skirtz.

Since I had the overlocker out, I decided to attack another stretchy fabric project. I had one of Paul’s old t-shirts:

I’d put it aside thinking I’d make it into one of those tube head band thingys you get at camping/adventuring stores. Nothing fancy here, I just cut a rectangle of cloth from the shirt’s back, overlocked the top and bottom edges and then seamed up the sides. You can wear it scrunched together as a headband:

Or stretch it out over your head like a sock hat.

I do this to protect my hair when painting, or make sure none of my hair gets into the food when cooking. Not flattering, but practical. Having succeeded at that, I realised there was something I could do with old con t-shirts:

This one yielded two tube head bands. I nearly chopped up another t-shirt, but decided not to when I realised it involved changing the overlocker thread to white. It takes a much more important project to motivate me to tackle re-threading an overlocker!