Thursday 5 June 2014

How to: Transform a T-Shirt into a vest.

Now I'm not taking you for an idiot, I get that this is super easy to do. However, theres so many ways to do it and in fairness - so many ways you can get it wrong.

Personally these days I just like a nice sleeveless vest top - gone are the days of cutting my t-shirts so you can pratically see the entire side of my body.

When cutting off the sleeves there are 2 ways you can go about it - by cutting either before or after the seams. For me, I love the worn, flimsy look - its pretty much on loads of summer vests these days and you can create this look for £0.

What you'll need is simple, a steady hand and a pair of scissors.


I opted to cut up this band t-shirt, i always seems to be my shirt of choice as having slightly bigger arms I often feel pretty closed in, in t-shirts so I like the freedom of no sleeves.

 Start by making a cut on the line of the stitching - preferably somewhere unnoticeable, I always go for under the armpit as its easy to tidy up later and no one will (or shouldnt be) looking at that part when you wear it.

I then cut slowly along the fabric through the stitching one large cut at once. If you cut in small amounts you can snip into the fabric or create a chunky cut and it causes easy mistakes or a larger tidy up job at the end.
The hardest part (and the main decision to make) is the shoulder - on some tee's, particularly those of less quality if you snip the seam out of the shoulders it can try to pull away the stitching on the shoulder - personally I take this risk as I think it looks abit rubbish leaving that one chunk of seam left but its entirely up to you.

The one on the left is the seam left in and the right one without on the shoulders


Purely for purpose of this post - I cut each sleeve before or on the seam to show you the difference - however, deciding to cut before the seam made for a messy job. However on both cuts, some errors like these were made....




These can just be cut out afterwards but keep an eye on the shape of the sleeve to make sure you dont get chop happy!

These are the results from both kinds of cuts...
 
On / Pulling out the seam and stitching

Leaving the seam on the edge of the t-shirt

In the end I cut out the seam on the other sleeve and the final thing looked like this...

Not much of a difference but it makes a boring t-shirt a bit more on trend and for me personally, its so much more wearable now.

I've been doing this for a while now (since I was 18? so for like nearly 5 years) an for some reason I used to be better at it haha! Heres some of my others....



This was the first one I ever did and I was pretty adventurous going for the neckline too!!


So there you go - a summary of how to cut off the sleeves for an on trend vest! I know its simple and I've not worded it amazingly but if you have any questions at all - please leave them at the bottom and I'll get back to you!!!


Have you ever got scissor happy on clothing??? What transformations have you created?

xXx

1 comment:

  1. I have a few friend who love doing this to their shirts. I've never done it because I'm always afraid it will turn out bad!

    Christina
    http://kissesandflowers.blogspot.com/

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