Remodeling a T-Shirt

Whenever we go home to Hawaii I always look for little trinkets and things to bring home to my son, Scott. Usually it is some kind of tshirt as it is his uniform of choice. I found a treasure trove at Costco and brought them home, but Scott lamented that he already had so many "Da Hui" tshirts for each day of the week and the one I brought back was too loud and wild for his taste. Dale warned me that this would happen, but I liked the shirt because it was so colorful which is precisely why he didnt like it. What to do, what to do.

Last night Dale showed me a social magazine called Flipboard and in it there was a video on how to convert a large tshirt into a dolman sleeved blouse. If you are interested here is a link to the video: Convert a man's t-shirt to a dolman sleeve blouse. I was fascinated on how easy this project looked and decided to give it a try.

Men's large t-shirt

This is what the tshirt looked like when I started. It was an extra large men's tshirt.

I liked the neckline of this sweatshirt.

I did not want to do an off the shoulder neckline as was shown in the tutorial so I took a shirt whose neckline I already liked and copied it. I traced it on to the shirt by folding both shirts in half along the center front and center back. What I didn't do was then cut off about 3/4" which will be the finished size of the band. In my picture the band is higher because I didn't allow for this. A woman my age should not go around scaring people exposing too much skin!

The project turned out pretty well except I forgot to include a 2 - 3 inch "ease" in the garment. Usually manufacturers add this "ease" to make the garment more comfortable to move in. Also it was not specified how wide to cut the finish bands or indicate the size of the seam allowance so I guesstimated that the band around the waist and arms was to be a 4" band and a 1/4" seam allowance. For the neckline I cut out a 2" band. Since the band was not cut on the bias, it did not "hug" the neckline as well as I would have liked.

A 2-3" ease should be added.

The two pictures above show the finished product. You can see that the shirt without the 2" ease is a little tighter than I would have liked. The next picture also shows the finished product with the arms camouflaging my tummy.

Finished dolman sleeve t-shirt

All in all I was pretty happy in how this turned out and it only took me about 2 hours to do. Now I'm on the hunt for men's t-shirts to convert into this kind of shirt for a woman as t-shirts seem to be what I wear daily.

Kauai 2012

I found a new app that will allow me to blog from my iPad so I'm doing a little practice post.
While on our last visit to Hawaii Dale and I took a little side trip to Kauai for sentimental reasons as that is where we spent our honeymoon. We did the usual touristy things like visiting the Waimea Canyon to Hanalei Valley.
Ok, now I've inserted a picture of Dale at Waimea Canyon and chose that this picture should be on the left of the screen with the writing around the picture, but it is clearly not happening right here. Perhaps when I publish this will right themselves.
Whenever Hawaiians return to their hometown, they will eat everything in site because they can't get it anywhere else: sushi, saimin, dim sum, shave ice.... Talk to any Hawaiian and we are always talking about food. We can't help ourselves and there is nowhere else that serves the same kind of food as they do in Hawaii. Even Chinese food elsewhere is "different."
Because Dale and I had been on Weight Watchers, we had stayed away from anything white which it turns out to be almost anything delicious in Hawaii. Friends and family told us to be sure to eat at Hamura's. It's a local noodle joint in Lihue, Kauai. We did and this time instead of sharing a bowl of saimin, we each had one along with sticks of teriyaki. Pictures will follow. The first picture is of the teriyaki sticks, then saimin then the jar of Hawaiian chili pepper water. It was heaven and like the movie, "Ramen Girl," it was all in the broth. We were both in carbohydrate heaven!

At left is a picture of Dale at Waimea Canyon.
Chili pepper water. Hawaiians love this local spice concoction that can heat up anything.
The works saimin. It's been in the 30's this evening and a hot bowl of this could hit the spot right about now.
href='https://picasaweb.google.com/110231100906673243007/Kauai201202#5738529928219809778'> Teriyaki stick.
Well, this post was a little frustrating as you have to know a little html to insert text with the pictures. It's a little frustrating, but I did it. Can't figure why html code appears on one of my pictures. The tags appear to be ok in the draft. Oh well, I learned something new today!
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Kauai