Transforming old tops... into NEW ones.

So, this project has been waiting for me for a long time. I've wanted to do it for ages, but never got the juices flowing. Just to show how long it's been:















Now, being off the medication for depression, energy and motivation have reentered my life. True, I am crazy close to tears all the time. Like yesterday, you know: WorldCup, Germany playing against the USA. I was at university during the game, but we had some laptops so we knew how it was going (1:0 for us in the end). It was nice, but did not touch me emotionally. On my way home there were cars honking and people screaming and making happy sounds. Then I cried. Not a lot, but my eyes were full of tears, one might even have rolled.That's how much I enjoy the recovery of national pride.

Now, back to my project: I have had some tops that were too short. I do not like for my belly to show ;) ... At the same time I've had some tops that were ugly under the arms. Dark spots. So I combined two of those into one new:

All of it is totally eyeballed, I will take you through all
of the steps I did. The fun thing is: It turned out great even though it's not perfect. Nobody takes notice of the plaid that's not precisely in the middle. You will, now that you know ;)





This is how I did it:
1.  I cut off the top section of the top with the ugly top:

2. I put on the shirt I wanted as new top section (you might want to turn it inside out, just because the markings will not show in the end, but nobody noticed the markings, so who cares), I took the lower section to the mirror and decided where I wanted both parts to come together and marked it with blue tailor's chalk (my mom's equipped me well).

3. Next step was actually measuring where the marking was (15,5 cm) from the armpit.

 4. After that I marked 15,5 cm on the other side of the top as well and lay the measuring tape from one side to the other and marked below the tape from both sides for 1cm seam allowance:

5. Now you cut it. I did not take a picture of this ;)

6. Put right side to right side (the upper part was the right way, the bottom part was turned inside out). Put the seams on top of each other first and pin them together. Then you go around pinning it all together.

7. Maybe one section is bigger as the other?  It was like that for me. So I made a plait (roughly in the middle, both front and back). I just tried which way it looked better and decided for this, having the excess fabric on top layed to both sides:

8. Take out your machine and vaccum it. Put it up and sew both sides together. You totally see that I never cut even, I just went with the flow. If you are impatient (like me) you take out the pins as you go and look at how nice it's coming together ;)

 

9. Done with sewing around. (Now I actually pulled it to the right side and took the pictures of the end product - impatience galore). But there's another important step: NOW I cut around it all to make it nice and even.

10. Sew around with a zigzag stitch, you don't want the fabric to dissolve in the washing and your seam get open in the process:

11. Now you can turn it and enjoy your product (I'll be honest, these are the pictures I took BEFORE the zigzagging):

Just now (10 pm yesterday) I took some pictures of me wearing this. I like it best on the hanger, but am getting used to wearing it as well ;)

That thingy in the neckline? That's another post coming soon.

Have a great weekend!

This is now (Saturday 28.06.) part of the Sewing Saturday Link-up at Simple Simon and Company. Check out their page, I love it!