Parade of Projects Part 1. A Little Ruffled Shirt.

Just as I promised, here's the first post in a parade of children's sewing projects that I will be posting all week long!

A few housekeeping notes first....

A few changes may be making the blog a little wonky in the next little while.. bear with me and I'll keep you all updated as to what's going on so no one is left blinking in confusion in the shuffle. What will most likely be happening will be a move to a new domain name and when that site is complete, we will do one big move all at once and no one will get left behind... but like I said, I'll be keeping you all in the loop.

In other news... yes, there is a regular posting for this morning as well. You can scroll down past this tutorial and find it below

And keep watching for the giveaways starting on June 16th! There will be five give-aways starting on Thursday and Friday and breaking for the weekend to resume on Monday to Wednesday. (if that sounds confusing, don't worry.. I'll guide you through it.) Just some little tokens of my appreciation for all the lovely readers who bless me with their encouragement advice and patronage in this little head space.... yay, I'm excited.

But I'm also excited to start sharing some of the sewing projects... so without further ado, we'll start with the simple stuff... cause as a beginner sewer... that's where I start too...

Here's how to make a long- sleeved t-shirt into a short sleeved shirt with little girlie ruffles...

Oh and sorry for the poor photos... I'll be sharing my new sewing space with you all this week too and believe me when I say that climbing out of the dark basement was the best thing I ever could've done and my sewing and photos are now MUCH better for it... I think you will agree when we get there.

So, I started with this long sleeved -T that was getting a little short in the wrists for my lanky little girl. I took up a pair of scissors and.....

hacked them sleeves right off. Measuring of course so they were the same on either side. and still leaving 5 inches of sleeve on the shirt.

Then I cut three strips off the cut-off sleeves (they were little tubes and I cut them open to be strips) and serged along the edges of the strips so I will use them as ruffles on the front of the shirt.

I basted along the middle of each strip  and then pulled the basting to ruffle up the strip. (to do this, you hold the bottom thread and tug the top threads and the whole thing will gather up)

Then I evened all the strips so they were the same as the others and pinned them down to the front of the shirt. I used a small zig zag stitch to sew them down to the front of the shirt using my basting stitch as my guide and removing the pins as I went along.

My last step was to get a little fancy and add some dainty pearl buttons to the whole affair; about 3 per ruffle- evenly spaced.

And there you have it; a little ruffled t-shirt perfect for summer with a little vintage-esque flair.

For info on how to cap the sleeves check out the green dress tutorial found HERE or follow the other,  MUCH more talented Ashley from make it and love it.

Hope you get inspired to snip up some old winter clothes this summer; for I see no reason why this couldn't apply to your own closet too. ... hmmmm... maybe I should go hunt through that stack of long sleeves languishing on the shelves of my closet now that I think of it.....

Have a great week, see you tomorrow.