Reconstructed T shirt dress Tutorial

I've been wanting to make myself a bathing suit cover-up to wear this summer, so this weekend I set out to do just that.  I was shopping at Mighty Dollar on Saturday (Kind of like a Dollar Tree where everything in the store is $1), and I came across these random teal T-shirts, so I bought a few to use as fabric for my bathing suit cover up.  So I started sewing with an idea in my head but not sure how it would turn out. It ended up looking more like a summer dress than a bathing suit cover up, so I'll probably wear it as both. The photo above is the finished project. I snapped a few pictures as I was making it so I could show how it was constructed.  I am going to attempt to make a tutorial of how to make it, but I have to warn you, I am horrible at explaining things through pictures, so this may not be a beginner's tutorial; you may have to have a basic knowledge of sewing to figure it out.  If you do want to attempt this, I would be glad to answer any of your questions (just ask in the comments).

I started with three size extra large t shirts like this: 

 

First, I cut off the sleeves, and cut the tops of the shoulders like so:

Now this next step is going to mess with your head a little bit. I saw this idea online a long time ago, but I can't find the tutorial for that one to link it, so I'm going to attempt to explain it myself.  I turned the sleeves around backwards, and sewed them to the top of the shoulders, so the hem of the sleeve now becomes the neckline, like so:

At this point, I cut the bottom off the shirt just below the armholes and put it aside for the skirt part. I sewed up the sides of the shirt (where the armholes used to be) and made it more fitting around the chest.  I then had Jonathan measure me from the front of the shirt, across my shoulder, to the back of my shirt, to see how long I needed to make the sleeves.  This is what the top of the dress should look like after sewing on the sleeves(excuse the dirty bathroom mirror pic):

 Next step is the skirt.  I cut the bottom off of shirt #2, and added it with the bottom of that I already cut off of shirt #1.  You little skinny girls could probably get away with using just one shirt bottom as the skirt, but I have a little more meat on my bones so I wanted mine to be more full and gathered more.  This is what it looked like before I gathered the skirt:

The next step is to gather the top of the skirt.  Do this by setting your machine to a baste stitch; it's the longest stitch length.  Stitch all the way around the top of the skirt keeping your end threads long, and DONT BACKSTITCH). Another tip for gathering.. always gather onto the bobbin thread... it gathers much easier than the top thread.

 Gather the skirt until it is the same size as the top of the dress:

The next step, I did not photograph, but you sew the skirt onto the top part of the dress. This was the most difficult, pain in the butt, part. Pin the skirt to the top at each of the side seams, and in the front and back. There will be a lot of pulling.. and stretching... and possibly cussing the fabric (depending on your tolerance for sewing knit fabrics).


The braided sash is what took me the longest!! I pretty much used an entire t shirt to make the sash. I wanted it to wrap around me twice, but the fabric stretched as I was braiding and ended up being twice as long as I measured. It wraps around me about 4 times, but I like it better that way.  For the sash, a tube t shirt works best (one with no side seams).  I just started at the bottom and cut a strip in a spiral, about 1 inch wide, all the way to the top:

Pull the strip of fabric as you are cutting it to make it stretch into t shirt yarn, and you will want to cut your strips perpendicular to the stretchiest part of the shirt (if that makes sense) basically cut horizontal around the shirt. Rolling the strips into balls makes it much easier to braid them without them getting tangled together (and even then they will still get tangled, just not as bad).

Then braid your little heart out!!

  

Here is the finished dress again:

The back:

 

Detail of the Sash:

Here is a close up of the flower on the shoulder:

This is the link to the tutorial I used to make the flower, except I didn't glue it together, I sewed it.  http://matsutakeblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/waiting.html

Thanks for reading, and like I said, I'm not very good at explaining things, so if you have any questions, I'd be glad to answer them.