Last Thursday was Canada Day and my darling boyfriend showed up to my house (with flowers!<3) wearing a far-too large "I Heart BC" shirt. I asked him about it and he told me that he had purchased it when he was a heavier chap but kept it around for such appropriate occasions. I couldn't deny that it was indeed suitable, but it looked like an absolute tent on him, so I suggested that he let my try to cut it down to size. Since all he had to lose was an ill-fitting shirt, he agreed. So a couple days later, I had him bring me that shirt, as well as a properly fitting shirt to use as a template, and I got to work.
I started by turning the shirts inside out and laying them both out flat on the table, just to see what kind of work would be involved. Clearly, some serious width needed to be removed, so the first thing I did was remove the sleeves. I got out my seam ripper and, being more fond of shortcuts than of added care, started pulling out every 6th stitch or so, and then ripped the whole thing off Hulk-style at the end. Repeat for the other sleeve.
At this stage, I wanted to be a little more careful. T-shirts can be hard to lay against one another without any of the fabric bunching, and since I was going to be adding completely new seams to the side of the shirt, I didn't want any unevenness, so I quickly ironed both shirts before placing them very carefully on top of one another.
At that point, it was just tracing. I used my chalk pencil and traced a line along the edge of the purple shirt, approximating where the new sleeve would start. The white shirt was a little longer but I opted to keep the length for simplicity's sake, since my boyfriend is something of a giant, anyways. Once I finished tracing, I moved the purple shirt aside and pinned all along the lines.
Then I went straight into sewing! I started out doing a tight straight-stitch from the bottom of the sleeve to the bottom of the shirt. I did that on both sides, and then did a tight zigzag stitch on the outer edge of both of those lines to make it more secure (I hope?) and then cut off the excess fabric as close to the stitches and as neatly as possible.
I should also mention that the use of grey thread was intentional. I wanted to be able to see my stitches, which came in handy, as I had to take many out while I struggled with the sleeves. I actually ran out and had to use white on one sleeve, which was a nightmare.
Anyways, after that, I took my removed sleeves and placed them up against my new sleeve hole. I cut them down to size, removing the seam. To make the new seam, I followed the same process as the sides of the shirt, removing the rest of the pins from the body of the shirt and continuing that same line straight down to the edge of the sleeve, and then adding the zigzag for good measure. The measurements needed to be quite precise here to make sure there was just the right amount of fabric for the sleeve to be attached all the way around.
The sleeves were a bit tricky. It was the same process again, line and then zag, but it involved a bit more careful pinning and making sure that no tiny folds of fabric got sewn over as I fed it through the machine. But after a heaping handful of mistakes were made, and excess fabric and threads were trimmed, the finished product looked surprisingly neat!
The new seams might be a little itchy and it might be a smidge tight in the armpits, but it's certainly no more tent! Ready to wear come BC day! I'm casting this one as another success.
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