BookSaver attended a sewing program on adding pizzazz to plain items. Wonder what she'll sew?
My contribution as one of the presenters to the program was my Tshirt for work from last summer. It was ordered from a catalog and it fit me, but was a very snug fit and uncomfortable for my work situation, plus the sleeves were shorter than I think is flattering on me. The shirt could not be exchanged.
I wanted to wear it because it's a basic black Tshirt with a library logo in lots of pretty colors on the front. I couldn't find a matching fabric, but I found a coordinating dark peacock blue left over from a knit top I'd made years ago.
(Side note: bad news for efforts to declutter fabrics, as one never knows when it might come in handy!) I split the sleeves across to insert a strip of the blue fabric to add length to them, and then split both sides to insert the blue fabric to add width to the body of the shirt. Now it fits comfortably for work, and the color blocking ended up being quite attractive.
I didn't think my shirt was that big of a deal -- it was an idea born of necessity and I got lucky with already having the right color fabric to add -- but the person putting together the "add the pizzazz" program liked it enough to ask me to join that panel of presenters.
This month I needed to alter 2 Tshirts for work for the same reasons -- ordered from the state-wide summer theme catalog, the sizes ran small, and they couldn't be returned. They fit snug enough that they were not comfortable to work in and they were not flattering.
One shirt I used the same method as I did for last year's -- split the sleeves and sides, inserted wide strips to add length and width. The base Tshirt is navy blue with the logo in white; the fabric I added is a lighter color of blue but the same intensity. I think that's the word I want, intensity? color saturation?
The other shirt was easier to fix because it fits well everywhere but the bottom hem. It needed a couple more inches around my hips to stop it from riding up as I move. How I fixed it was I split open the bottom of the right side about 6 inches, and added 2 long rectangles of fabric. The base shirt is dark blue with the logo in red and black, the fabric I added is black so I can wear the shirt with either blue jeans or black jeans. I loosely tie the long rectangles I added at my hip, which both adds the couple of inches needed and also adds a little draped shape so it isn't just a straight line across my widest part.