Upcycled Baby Shirt Goodness

Nesting? Yes, most definitely. Over the past 24 hours, I have made seven baby shirts for the little guy. One for every day of the week, of course.

Update! Want to make some of these yourselves? Between this baby gown tutorial over at This Mama Makes Stuff, and my tutorial for the two-tones sleeves, you can make these too!

This "I Rock" tee is the only one of the seven made from a thrifted tee. (The rest were free from the hubby! The hubby bought a few new t-shirts the other day, and you know what that means.... adding some of his older ones to my fabric stash!)



Before I knew him, my husband was really into "No Fear" apparently. He has about eight of these "No Fear" shirts. They sure do make some bad-@ss baby shirts though :)



A men's XXL shirt is big enough to make two, count them two size 3-6 month shirts. Woohoo! For the first one, I utilized the print on the front of the shirt. For the second one, I made it out of the plain back side of the shirt. That enabled me to do some decorative applique on the plain ones :)

This first applique was store bought... Joanns clearance for 99c. I figured I would use the image to create a Valentines shirt for my first son, however since he was born on Valentine's Day, that didn't really pan out. He gets cute little number shirts to wear instead, declaring how old he is :)



Excuse me while I drool over these next baby shirts. I love me some red and white polka dots. And in the shape of the best state in the nation? Just an added bonus :)



Every little boy needs a necktie shirt! No need to reinvent the wheel, so you can check out this tutorial on how to do it over at Crap I've Made


Just a side note about the appliques... Make sure that you make a mirror image of your print before you draw it onto to your fusible web. Yeah, I forgot to do that. Every time. Seriously. It's really easy- here's how I do it. I find a picture online that I would like to trace (something simple!), and then I print screen on my computer. You do this by hitting control, alt, and print screen simultaneously (at least on my laptop that's how it's done). Then I open up the program "Paint," press "control, V" which pastes your picture into the paint program. There's a feature in there to flip the image horizontally. I do that, hold my fusible web up to the laptop screen, and trace around it. Voila!

You might have noticed that all of these shirts have two-tones sleeves. This is for two reasons. One, I like the look :) Two, I utilized the sleeves from the men's tees that I was upcycling, however, as they were all short sleeve shirts, there simply wasn't enough sleeve fabric to make long baby sleeves.

I could have made the long sleeves out of a different portion of the shirt, however I really wanted to utilize the hem on the original sleeves. Luckily, I have enough t-shirt scraps lying about, that I was able to turn all these men's sleeves into baby long sleeves! (Are you sick of the word "sleeve" yet? It's one of the words that the more you say it, the weirder it sounds. Sleeve. Sleeve. Sleeve....)

So in case you are interested (is anyone still reading this??!) in making some long sleeved baby shirts, here's how I did it. First of all, visit This Mama makes stuff for her tutorial on how to make a baby gown from an adult sized tee. I simply made the baby gown shorter and didn't do the elastic bottom, and you've got yourself a 3-6m tee. I laid a long sleeve shirt on top of the pattern, added a bit of an allowance for the hem (which you don't need to do if you're using the hems from the bottom of the adult tee), and then marked on the pattern with a dotted line where to cut.

When it comes to the sleeves, I used two coordinating men's sleeves to make one long baby sleeve. The part of the sleeve that connects to the shirt itself is made from the same color as the shirt. The part that goes down to the wrist is made from a coordinating color. I utilized the hemmed part of the sleeves for both the upper and lower parts. Less work, baby.

Are you still following? I really should have taken photos along the way.

I always cut out the top portion of the sleeve first, and then lay the bottom portion on so that it overlaps the hem of the upper portion. After cutting the bottom portion out so that the total sleeve is as long as the pattern, pin the two parts together, and then slowly sew over the existing thread lines from the hem on the upper portion. This creates one long sleeve with two pretty colors! Hopefully. If you understood all that mumbo jumbo. I know pictures to look at would make it easier. So sorry! Maybe I'll make another one and take pictures of the process this time. If you want me to, let me know and I will! (That's a good excuse to make one more baby shirt, right?)

Other than that, I think using the baby gown tutorial should get you through! Good luck! Oh, and let me see if you make one too :)