Friday 7 September 2012

Refashion Friday Inspiration: Monochrome Cartoon Bib T-shirt



It's Friday, so you know what that means: another injection of Refashion Friday!!!!! As hopefully you've come to notice, each Friday I post about refashioning/upcycling/remaking unwanted clothing into new, wearable and fun garments. Usually it's a dose of inspiration (like today) that may inspire your own projects; occasionally the Refashion Friday posts are a more involved tutorial or 'how-to' (all of which can be found on this page).






Like another recent T-shirt creation, today's idea is not one I can't entirely lay claim to! I found this fantastic child's dress by 'So Tei-Tei' via Pinterest and fell in love with its unusual bib detail. By the way, Cecilia creates children's sewing patterns and has this and many others for sale on her blog. The original dress is made from woven fabric but I decided to reinterpret the style from unwanted men's T-shirts to make a super-wearable adult version.


I re-cut the front and back body pieces from an unwanted black men's T-shirt and harvested the original neck ribbing to reuse. I used another unwanted black T-shirt to cut the sleeves (which have gathered sleeve heads to give the garment a touch of femininity) and the bib section. The edges of the bib section were pressed under 1cm to aid application. I cut a narrow bias strip from an unwanted white T-shirt and pressed it in half to form the contrast piping. If I'd had some, I would have used pre-made bias binding because the jersey bias was pretty fiddly and difficult to get perfect.


After pinning the living day-lights out of it to keep the bib and bias in position, I topstitched the whole bib section down in one go. You could use a contrast colour for the bib, even using a woven fabric (which would be easier!). I added six bold buttons like the original inspiration once the T-shirt was constructed. I think the monochrome colour palette and strong styling gives this T-shirt a cartoon appearance. My only regret about this creation is that I didn't make one for myself!

10 comments:

Kirsty said...

Oh I love it Zoe. How super dooper cute!

MrsC (Maryanne) said...

It's so gorgeous! Are you going to keep making garments like this for sale? They are so inspirational!

Sølvi said...

Veery cute! Such a great friday inspiration! :-)

Gail said...

You have such an eye for creativity. This is simple enough for me to do and elaborate enough to generate positive feedback when worn. Now a suggestion (and I'm sure you already know this). Why not try a little steam a seam to hold difficult pieces in place rather than a lot of pinning. Saves me a lot of time and it's extremely accurate. Hope all is going well for you.

Gail said...

WOW - those word verifications are really difficult to decifer. It took me 3 tries and I guess another 3 to post this comment.

Kate said...

Another amazing refashion! This I really have to try!

Carolyn said...

I love this cute little top, the buttoned bib is a really nice detail :) And I'm so impressed with your beautiful finish with jersey piping, that is tricky stuff! Very cool.

Lizzy said...

You should show us the tutorial! it's very nice!

Zoe said...

Thanks everyone! I'm so glad you all like it.

@Gail, believe me I steamed and I steamed before I pinned. The piping and bib panel are jersey so tend to roll when cut

SewIThought said...

So simple but a world of difference!

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