Dear, dear Dave. Decided to do a little flinging of his own, and I ended up the lucky recipient of four fantastic Oxford cloth dress shirts! There are so many possibilities when repurposing a L or XL men’s dress shirt into something for a S or XS woman. I just had to leave aside the poor pile of my own clothes awaiting repurpose and dig right in to this one.
I wish you could reach out and touch this cloth. Finely woven cotton/poly, for a wrinkle free finish leaving it slightly slinky. I loved working with such nice material! And, it was a fun change from stretch knits, which seem to make up most of my closet.
I turned the shirt around, cut off the entire shoulder box, and created my pieces from there. I knew I could use the little extra fabric in the back pleat to ensure a good fit over the bust. I toyed with leaving it an actual pleat, but ended up really liking a simple gather at the neckline instead. I finished the edge with a strip of bias tape made from extra sleeve fabric.
The inspiration for buttons in the back actually came from the darling shirt of an almost-two-year-old little girl who I watched last week. It was simple, white, and button in the back. I thought, “I should have a shirt like that!” And, now I do! I played with the stitches on my machine and found a really cool shell stitch that leaves the edges slightly scalloped. Just enough detail while maintaining a beautiful and classic simplicity.
7 Comments
Our dry cleaner ripped the sleeve of one of Mike's shirts and they bought us another one, but weren't going to give us the old one back but I absolutely asked for it back. It has great fabric so of course I wasn't going to let it go to waste. I had thought of making a dress or skirt for G out of it, but I never thought of doing something for me! Now maybe I will! (Although I'm certainly not S or XS so I'll have to see if it will work
Hey! So glad you left a comment on my blog, Ii was pretty sure people forgot about it since i never post!!! You look so great and Milo couldn't be cuter:) Are you coming to SLC soon? We should all try to get togther.
i really like this one! i want to do this with a couple of my shirts! what do you say i pay you like 5 bucks per shirt?
You could seriously have an entire business doing this.
agreed. you are amazin miranda.
ooh, i love that. nice work. makes me want to round up some of shane's shirts. wanna start making us some patterns?
This is an absolutely fantastic project. You should sell the patterns!! Seriously.