The Failure Files: The Braided Tee

I guess I've been doing a lot with T-shirts lately, between the quilt and the shopping bags, but today's post is one of those posts where I show you a spectacular failure. Because sometimes in Hell, you screw up. More often than not, actually. And I don't intend to hide my mistakes from you, dear readers. Some craft blogs are overflowing with tons and tons of absolutely perfect pictures of absolutely perfect finished objects. And that's cool! I like those!

But as someone very wise once said, don't compare your behind the scenes with other people's highlight reel. So in the interest of full disclosure, I bring you:

A Failed Thing. 

Click "Read More" to witness the failure in all its glory...

Recently I came across a pin on Pinterest (NO WAY!) that led me to this tutorial: DIY Braided Tee Shirt.

I love it so much! I still love it so much! What an awesome idea! What a neat way to add a little swag to an otherwise boring shirt! And it looked so easy!

I immediately wanted to use this technique on an upcoming refashion I'm pondering, but something gave me pause. Hey! I yelled at myself in my mom voice. Maybe you should, like, I dunno, try it out before you just commit to it like that, huh?

I'm not really a "try it out first" kind of girl. I prefer to fly by the seat of my pants and all that. But I obeyed my mom voice and snatched an old tee out of my scrap basket.

See, I'm a little bit picky about collars. If they're too high or too close to my neck they look strange on me. I was worried that this would exacerbate that problem, so I figured maybe it actually would be a good idea to test the concept first.

Here is the tee, ready to be pimped:

Now the tutorial recommends "measuring" and "marking with chalk" before just wildly cutting into the shirt, and other such nonsense. Ha! I don't have to follow your "rules"!!!

(Hint: I should have followed the rules.)

I snipped slits into the fabric around the collar:

(Picture lightened so you can actually see the slits.)

Now there was no way I was going to get a picture of myself braiding the thing because that was definitely a two-handed job and there wasn't anybody nearby who could take pictures of my silly experiment for me, but it's pretty easy. If you crochet, you know how to do this. You take the second strip and pull it under and around the first one. Then take the third strip and pull it under and through the loop from the second one, and on and on. The tutorial above gives a much more thorough and exemplary explanation.

I pinned the last braided strip in place instead of sewing it, not wanting to commit the shirt to the look until I'd tried it on.

And...

Meh.

It looked kinda weird on me. (Thanks mom voice!)

That is not at all to say that the overall tutorial is a failure. I still think it's a great idea! But perhaps someone who doesn't look so turtle-like with weird round collars could try it and it would look a lot better. Or maybe it would look better with a different kind of collar all together! Who knows?

In any case, I'm glad I listened to my inner mom and tested this one out first. I would have been pretty disappointed if I'd done this to a "real" recon!

See? FAILURES. They happen.

XOXO