5 Sewing Projects Using T-Shirts
Recycle and Repurpose to Make a Baby Dress, Pants and Even Underwear
Old t-shirts provide a useful source of fabric that can be used in a variety of sewing projects. With some creative thought unique and useful items can be made.
Sewing and needlework needn’t be expensive hobbies. There are many ways of finding low cost or free materials to work with.
Old or discarded t-shirts, for instance can be a great source of cotton jersey. Good quality t-shirts will be made from a heavy cotton and will be colorfast, giving strong colors to work with. T-shirts typically have an image on the front and sometimes the back, giving the creative sewer a challenge to work with. If the design is attractive then how do you fit this into your project. Correspondingly, if the design is uninspiring, perhaps a boring company logo then the challenge is turning this into an interesting feature.
The best t-shirts to work with are those that are not too worn. Whilst frayed, faded or damaged parts of the fabric can be cut away and discarded, it is better to have some material of reasonable quality to work with. It would be a shame to spend a lot of time on a project, only for it to be let down at the end because the material wasn’t up to the job. Old t-shirts can be found not only lurking at the bottom of wardrobes or drawers, but also for sale cheaply at thrift or charity shops.
There are many interesting things that can be done with old t-shirts – they are certainly worth a lot more than just being used for rags! The t-shirt material can be stabilized to give a firm non-stretch fabric, or left as it is being a soft stretchy material. This will largely depend on the project.
5 Sewing Projects Recycling T-Shirts
There are some great free sewing patterns and projects available online. 5 interesting ideas have been detailed below.
T Shirt Quilts
T-shirt quilts are a great way to use old t-shirts. Take a look at this Suite101 article for more information.
Underwear
Why not use old t-shirts to make some unusual underwear? The cotton fabric lends itself to underwear and using the pattern or logo on the t-shirt can lead to some interesting projects. For more reading about this take a look at getcrafty.com.
Baby/ Toddler Dress
Using a baby t-shirt combined with an adult t-shirt a cute dress can be made. Instructions and more information can be found at this blog.
Toddler Pants
An adult t-shirt can be turned into a pair of toddler pants. Use an existing pair as a template. There are some detailed tutorials available which clearly explain the individual steps.
T-shirt Dress
Attaching a skirt to a t-shirt can make a simple dress. The skirt can be any length or style meaning that this is an extremely versatile idea. There are some instructions explaining how to do this on HGTV.com.
For more interesting reading, take a look around the Suite101 Sewing and Needlework site.
