Making a Two T-Shirt Dress

About a week ago I had one of those ideas that come just before sleep that kept me awake for at least an hour - working out the details and making plans. The idea was to reuse some T-shirts my husband had culled from his closet (the neck was stretched out, the underarm fabric was rotting, or the cat had made a hole trying to untangle a claw) to extend the length of some of my T-shirts into dresses. I have quite a few T-shirts and tend to not put them on frequently enough to ever wear them out…and I enjoy wearing the one knit dress I have during the hot days. I came up with several ideas about how to put the dresses together to get enough length for a dress.

In the morning I started my first Two T-shirt Dress. I started with a turquoise T-shirt that I’d used for painting - managing to get some splatters on the bottom hem. The pattern on the front of the shirt ended for a high waist - a good place to cut. A Black t-shirt with a little writing on the upper front was in the pile from my husband; I cut the bottom off just under the arms. His shirt was a little bigger around that mine was so I made side seams in the black tube to make it the same circumference as the turquoise one. The dress needed more length so I was going to have to use the turquoise piece I had cut off at the bottom of the dress. I cut the hem off the black T-shirt so that the seam would be less bulky and cut the teal peak on the bottom so that there would be a slit to make walking easier. Both bottom pieces were use inside out from the original shirt so I had to turn up a hem in the lower teal shirt portion. I used a stretch stitch for the seams and then finished the edges together with a zigzag stitch.

The second dress was even easier. I decided to just add onto the end of my light blue T-shirt because the pattern was so large. The bottom was cut from a navy blue T-shirt and simply gathered onto the bottom of the light blue T-shirt (I cut the hem from the light blue shirt to reduce the seam bulk. The original hem of the navy blue T-shirt became the hem for the dress - so this was a one seam dress!

The third dress was the hardest because I had to piece the ‘skirt’ part to get enough length. I decided that I didn’t want to length in the lighter color and I didn’t want it again at the bottom of the dress either. Also - I did not realize until after the dress was made that it would need to have some elastic at the waist because it looked way too big otherwise. I made the casing for the elastic by stitching the edge of the seams attaching the lighter shirt to the skirt.  I'll probably tie a scarf around the waist of this one.

All three of these dreses are going to be worn frequently until it gets cooler.

When my 40 year old sewing machine actually worked after I oiled it, I thought I would use it for some fabric/thread doodling - maybe make a small quilt - but I am way more satisfied with my Two T-shirt Dress project!