My crazy DIY dress project!

 

It's done! It all started with a pile of conference T-shirts, plus a couple of others.  Each year, I get a voucher at my annual conference to spend at the 'conference store'.  The voucher is a perk of teaching workshops at the conference, and I use them to pick up a conference T-shirt.  But here's the problem.  I don't EVER wear these T-shirts.  They don't fit well.  My hips are too large for a small, but a medium is huge on my shoulders.  And I despise the necklines.  So I cut out the necks and made them into scoop or V-neck shirts figuring I'd wear the ill-fitting shirts to the gym or tromping in the woods.  But  I discovered that, even though they looked a little better without the hideous necks, the cheap T-shirt fabric is hot and scratchy, definitely not gym-wear.  So they sat in a drawer, until I decided to do something with them.

After much deliberation and experimentation,  I made this dress/tunic, using quotes I found on the shirts.  I hope that Cassie Stevens is proud of me for this sewing project! 

 This piece on the back is from a T-shirt that I got, I swear, probably 20 years ago, when I renewed a subscription to School Arts magazine.  It was softer than the conference shirts, and I wore it until it was getting yellowed and threadbare.  This was a good way to rescue it.  Here's a close up of "How to be an Art Teacher".

 Got Art?, anyone?

 My sleeves!

 For the first time, I was actually able to use my duct tape dressmaker's dummy, Violetta, to help fit the garment, and it worked like a charm.  I was able to narrow the shoulders and shorten the torso, while getting the loose-fitting shape that I wanted in the body.  In case you don't remember, here's Violetta:

My original plan was to cut the shirts in to rectangles and piece them together like a puzzle, but that just wasn't a workable idea.  Instead, I selected a comfy very deep violet knit fabric, and cut out the various parts of the tunic.  Then, I used WonderUnder to adhere the random odd shaped quotes onto the dress pieces, and I zigzagged around them to give them a more finished look.  Once that was done, I was able to sew together the whole shebang!

On the front of my tunic:

 A close-up of the front:

 Look carefully on the table next to me, in front of the clock.  If you really  LOOK, you will see a little stuffed Adirondack black bear.  His name is Nelson (he was named after Nelson Mandela), and he has traveled to South Africa and back to live in my home.  You can read the story of how he came to live in my house, and the saga of his travels in this post I wrote in March 2011!