Made By Lex

This is another shirt that I did for my friend. I feel like black is hard to refashion because other prints don’t look great with it, and finding a matching black is hard. So I took this shirt and added a removable floral pin. It is in vintage silk.
I love the two of them sitting there. And you can take it off and move it in other places on the shirt or on a different place, all together.

They have a slight sheen to them and I used this gold fabric for the center.

Sadly, I don’t think this next one is going to show as cool as it is in person. I took this grey shirt and cut up patching grey jersey.

I twirled, pinned, twirled more, placed strips, stabbed myself, put on a bandaid, twirled more… you get the picture. It was extremely labor intensive but I think it came out soooo neat.

I stitched over all the pieces a few times to create a mulit-dimensional look.

Then I wrapped it around the back ever so slightly. The shirt is on it’s side here. I really love this one.

At this point, I know all of you are saying, “Get over the ruffles! All you do is ruffles!” Well, I happen to love them and am not going to stop ruffling. But I decided to offer a differnet perspective. I got this shirt at Target in the maternity section. It was an XXXL but I couldn’t resist the color, softness and the $1.20 price tag.

What you need to do is get another t-shirt you like and use it to cut out a pattern. Tuck in the arm sleeves of you shirt and cut around it. Save the scraps!

Here’s how mine looks. Now you need to sew the sides of the shirt back together.

Now we need to reattach the sleeves. The might be slightly larger than your new armhole, so you can gather or pleat them at the shoulder.

This is how mine looks. I also cut the neckline open more because I wanted more of a scoopneck. Remember you don’t need to hem jersey so cut away!

Now that our shirt is all ready, it’s time to doll it up. Using your scraps from the sides and the bottom hem, but out as many little hearts as you can.

This is how many I got.

I am going to cluster mine on one side of the shirt. So I start out with one and I do a zig-zag stitch dow the middle of the heart. A tip here is if you have some lightweight innerfacing, add it to the back of the shirt before you start sewing more added support.

Just add more and more, layer and layer them and here’s what mine came out like.

I was inspired by a shirt from J. Crew and am so happy with the way it came out.

Up close heart petals.
I think it would look great with these vintage pearls, jeans and some knee-high boots.

For my mom’s birthday I re-created these shirt for her. She loves olive so I got this long sleeve jersey knit and made it short sleeve.

Then I took the leftover sleeves and cut them into strips. Then I double layered them, slightly ruffled them and added them all the way around the neckline.

Then I took this salmon colored one and added some grey knit and some leftover olive on top of it.

I also double layered this one.
I hope my mom likes them!

Here are a few more dolling up of tops that I did this week.

I added this pleated trim to this maternity shirt.

I love this fabric that I used for this shirt.

It almost looks like jewels to me.

Then I took this ribbed tank and added some detail to it. When my friend and I had our baby/mama business, we sold a TON of these. They were really popular.

Here’s the detail at the back. The wraparound fabric on the sides is sooo slimming.
I took this soft, lilac shirt and added two rows of orange and cream ruffles to each side.

Then I took this baby blue shirt and did a really cool effect I hadn’t tried yet.

I ruffled brown fabric on both sides so it becomes a really textured piece of trim. It looks so cool on the shirt. I left the edges unfinished so it would have a deconstructed look. I like it because this shirt is so simple and clean and it adds a really neat edge to the top.

I had this nice shirt that I really liked that had a couple of stains on it. I really didn’t want to throw it out. So I decided to do a ruffle front.

Here’s how it turned out! I’m IN LOVE with it. I did 3 different tones of white. I love tone on tones because it’s more interesting than just one flat color.
Here are the ruffle up close in all their glory.

Here’s an outfit I think it would look great with. The ruffles will soften and girl-ify the look of the Western boots.

I’m so happy now because I have so many shirt with stains on the front and I like tearing them up and using them for other things, but now I have another way to repurpose them. I think a black/grey would look awesome, too!