Tuesday's Tute: Make a Tutu Shirt ;)

Inspired by clothing in the Chasing Fireflies catalogue, we've been trying new things with tulle the past few weeks. A tulle related pattern is being tested presently. (tease!) To get you all ready for some tulle fun, here's a little project for jazzing up a t-shirt. Our's happened to have a stain, now under one of the flowers ;) This little shirt, now given new life, is ready to coordinate with our other tutu creation.

Now for the tutorial:

Materials:

A shirt (either Ready to Wear or made by you) By the way...if you need a great t-shirt pattern, our Fun and Easy Knit Top/Dress , in the right-hand column will be a great buy.Tulle scraps 1" wide and as long as you like

Sewing machine

Directions:

1. Cut tulle into strips 1" wide. We used 6 strips 54" long on this shirt. It's easiest to fold and stack up several layers of tulle and cut them all at one time.

2. Gather the tulle: Sew a gathering stitch down the middle of the tulle strip. We let our machine gather for us. Overlap the tulle strips and sew them into one continal gathered strip. You want the tulle to be well gathered and may need to pull the threads up some to get the look you like.

3. Decide the design you'd like to create on the t-shirt and draw (with a washable or disapearing fabric pen) your path. Or simply eyeball it, like I did.

The best path to take is more vertical than horizontal. Horizontal seams on knit can be problematic and inhibit the stretch of the fabric when wearing.

4. With a small 2 x 2 zigzag stitch sew the tulle onto the shirt (sew on top of your gathering stitch. It's ok if the tulle strip gets twisted. We sewed it down as it layed and it looks great.

5. Embellish if you wish. The center of the flowers could be embellished with some pearls or a small button. We may still do this. My dd is deciding. You could even combine this with a fabric applique or some embroidery.

That's it. Your shirt is finished. Washing it is fine, but the dryer can "melt" some tulle. Our's has been in the dryer a little bit and made it out fine, but we've had some tulle things come out looking quite poorly. Line drying is the best idea.

Happy Sewing!

Debbie