I MADE A THING!!!

So I did it!

I wanted to make something, I thought about making something, and I said SCREW IT and I made something!

THIS IS THE THING I MADE!!

See how excited I am? THAT'S HOW EXCITED I AM!!

This shirt started off as kind of a schlumpy long-sleeved hooded tee that my mom got tired of and passed along to me. I wore it a few times but never liked how it looked and it never quite fit me right anyway. So I decided it was time to cut it to pieces and see what happened.

Here was the comfy yet unflattering garment before I attacked it ruthlessly with my scissors:

Not so great, right? And I don't know if you can tell or not, but the hood was just short enough that it tugged upward on my shoulders whenever I wore it, making it completely useless as a hood. So I laid it out on my horribly stained cutting mat and chopped off the sleeves:

Then I cut away the hood:

Then I basically tried it on and took it off and snipped and chopped and tried it on and took it off and snipped and chopped over and over again until it was fitting me perfectly as a tank. I did have to shorten the straps a little to bring the underarm up because the sleeves left a pretty gaping hole.

I could have left it as a tank, but I was specifically wanting to turn this into something kind of girly that I could wear out with friends or to a party or something, so I opened up the sleeves:

And cut away the rounded top part of each one:

And pinned the straight edges to the outside of the armholes on the shirt to make little cap sleeves. I also "ghetto-lettuced" the edging because I don't have a serger - I just picked a nice tight zig-zag and stretched the hell out of the fabric while sewing along the edge of the cap sleeve. Anyway it turned out looking like this:

Which isn't super awesome, but it'll do. Makes it a little frilly and covers up the ragged cutting job.

I don't have many pictures of this next part, because it was really hard to do it and take pictures at the same time, but let me see if I can describe it well:

I took the rest of one of the sleeves and cut it into strips about an inch wide, then I sewed the short ends together until I had one long, 1"-wide strip. Then I took a length of thread about the same measurement as the front scoop of my neckline, and I hand-sewed a running stitch down the center of the fabric strip, gathering along the thread as I went to create a ruffle.

Then I pinned the ruffle to the neckline, sewed it down, and then I declared myself DONE and had a nice bowl of noodles in a spicy cream sauce.

YAAAAY FOR MAKING THINGS!! I will probably be this excited about making things the next several times I make things, so just be prepared for that.

I can't wait to wear it somewhere! I think I'll wear it tomorrow!