I Could Make That

New craft ideas every Friday

frilly t-shirt mod – weekend confirmed!

All right ladies, you know the drill. This is about modifying awesome t-shirts from awesome events where they only carry apparel in awesome over-large unisex sizes. Awesome sauce all round.

My boyfriend acquired this week’s t-shirt (very limited edition) at PAX two years ago, where the 1Up Yours guys tossed them to the crowd during their panel. Jeremy (who you can see making fabulous faces in last week’s post) wore it a couple times but gave up on the shirt as workable apparel since it was too short for him. Tall slender people have it so hard.

But you can’t just ditch a one-of-only-X-number-printed t-shirt, especially when it says “Weekend Confirmed.” It would be wrong. Puppies would die in Siberia. Somewhere, the deity of small print-run t-shirts would cry.

So when I started modifying t-shirts, Jeremy gave it to me.

This was a great shirt to play with because it didn’t require very much resizing and because the graphic on the front is fairly small and is placed low enough to accommodate a nice girly scooped neck. Considering the message on the shirt, I decided it needed to be fun. What’s fun? Ruffles are fun.

So, read on and learn how to confirm your weekend. T-shirt.

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What you’ll need:

  • a t-shirt – this mod works best with a shirt that is about the right length and just a little too wide and too baggy.
  • sewing scissors
  • straight pins
  • thread that matches your shirt colour
  • a sewing machine (sorry, but even with extraordinary time and patience you couldn’t hand stitch the edging on these ruffles)
  • [optional] bias binding that matches your t-shirt

Note: Depending on exactly how your t-shirt fits you to start out with, this mod may turn out a little differently for different shirts and different people. It should be cute regardless, but if you’re specifically looking to creat a shirt that covers the shoulders and has that slight capped sleeve look, you’ll need to start with a t-shirt that’s too wide in the shoulders for you. Apart from that specification, you can pretty much do this with whatever shirt you’ve got.

Putting it all together:

1) Turn your t-shirt inside out. Then start by cutting the sleeves off. Do this by cutting right along the inside of the sleeve-to-body seam.


2) Pin the shoulders of the t-shirt together at either edge of the collar. Pin the two sides of the shirt together under the arms and at the shoulders just at the top of the arm hole. Essentially, you are folding the shirt together, so it folds in half along the middle of the back and the middle of the front. This probably makes more sense if you simply look at the picture.


Once those pins are in place, put a couple more in along the folds on the front middle and back middle of the shirt, to keep everything from moving around.

3) Decide how low you want the shirt’s collar to go in the front and back, and make a little mark at these points along the fold lines on the front and back of the shirt. Then decide how far across you want the neckline to be. Make a little mark to the side of the collar for this.

On a light shirt, pencil works for this. On a dark shirt use a white crayon.

4) Draw a curving line from one mark to the next. This is the shirt’s new collar line.

5) Cut along the line you drew.

Your shirt should now look about like this. Now to resize it for a more flattering, shapely fit.

6) Fold your shirt in half (the usual way). Pin it together along the edge.


7) Measure yourself around the waist (this is the “in” bit of the female hourglass figure, right around the bellybutton, not where your pants waist probably sits). Divide this measurement by 4. Measure this final number of inches in from the center fold of the shirt. Make this mark midway up the shirt, about where your waist would be. (It would be wise to add 1/2 inch or so, for breathing room and seam allowance. I didn’t, I should have.)

For example, my waist measures 28 inches, so I measured 7 inches in from the center fold. (Should have made that 7 1/2, though.)

8) From the edge of the shirt under the arms, to the hem of the shirt (perhaps in from the edge an inch or two), draw a line that curves inward at its center to touch the mark you made in step 7.

9) Cut along this line. (Keep the scraps you cut off the edges of the shirt.) Then unfold the shirt and pin the now-open sides together. Sew the shirt’s new sides closed.


Your shirt should now look a bit like this:

10) Now to finish the neck and arm holes. If you wish to use bias binding, continue on to step 7. Otherwise, simply fold the edges of your sleeves and collar to the inside, pin and iron them, and sew them down. Then skip ahead to step 11.

11) To use bias binding, turn your shirt right side out. Take your bias binding and unfold it completely. Now fold over one end of the binding and pin it up against the edge of the new collar line.


Important notes:

  • a) Notice how, when the bias binding is folded in half lengthwise, one side is slightly longer than the other. You will want this longer edge to be on the inside of the shirt. Therefor, the shorter edge is the one you want to pin along the collar’s edge in this step.
  • b) Be sure the shirt is right side out, and that you are pinning the binding to the outside of the t-shirt – as in the side that has all the printing and such on it! This may seem a bit odd, but it will work out perfectly, trust me.
  • c) The key to getting your bias binding to lay flat on your t-shirt is stretching the t-shirt just a bit between each pin. Otherwise the bias binding will bag outward a bit. Which it does on my shirt, and it’s not a huge deal. This takes a bit of practice to get just right. Washing the shirt will also flatten the binding down a bit, as will ironing the collar and sleeve edges when you’re done.

12) Pin the bias binding all the way around the collar in this manner, pinning frequently – every 1 1/2 to 2 inches. Be sure to pull the t-shirt fabric tight so the binding will sit evenly once sewn.

13) Sew the bias binding in place. See that first fold line on the binding? Sew along that, as precisely as you possibly can. (Note: the pictures in the next couple steps are from a different shirt mod).

14) Fold the bias binding over to the inside of the shirt and pin it in place. Then sew along the outside of the shirt, following the line where binding meets t-shirt.


Because the binding is a bit longer on the inside, this will catch that inside layer and sew it in place. Of course, if you’re using single fold bias binding like I did on my white shirt (not the one pictured right here), this may be a bit finicky, in which case just sew down the middle of the bias binding.

15) Time for ruffles! They’re super easy. Take the sleeves you cut from the t-shirt and cut them open along their seam. Cut the hem off the sleeves. Now slice a wide (between 2 and 3 inches) strip from each sleeve.


16) Sew these two strips together at one of their short ends.


Do the same thing with the strips you cut from the sides of the shirt. Make sure both of your sewn-together strips are the same length. It doesn’t matter if the lines you cut are not exactly straight. When the ruffles are done, a bit of unevenness along their edges won’t be noticeable.

17) If you have one, use a special edge-stitching presserfoot (see picture) to finish all the raw edges of your fabric strips. Make sure you check your machine’s manual (if you have it) to find out what the proper settings are for this presserfoot. On my machine the tension is set to A, stitch width is at 5 (max), stitch type is zigzag and stitch length is just above the buttonhole setting.

This is the ideal. If you don’t have such a presserfoot you may want to invest in one, as they’re really useful and I’ll be using mine for more t-shirt mods later on. However, you should be able to replicate this reasonably well by setting your machine to a wide zigzag stitch and putting the stitch length on or very close to the buttonhole setting.

Whichever method you use, this is going to take a lot of thread, so make sure your bobbin isn’t running low when you start this step.

18) Going back to the normal presserfoot and using a straight, very long stitch (I set mine at 4, which is the max on my machine), sew a line down the middle of each fabric strip. Do Not backstitch at either end! When you cut the thread, leave several inches dangling from your fabric strips.


19) At either end of each strip, pull one of the threads gently so that the fabric bunches up along it. You have to do this at either end because of the seam in the middle.


These are your ruffles.

20) Pin each ruffle from the underarm seam of the arm hole around to the back. Mine weren’t long enough to go around the whole arm hole, so they end midway down on the back side of the shirt, which looks fine. You’ll want to pin the center line of the ruffle just this side of your arm hole’s hem lines.


Pin everything to make sure it’s the length you want it (adjust by pulling out some of the ruffle), then, when it’s as you want it, tie a knot in the threads dangling from either end of your ruffles and cut off the extra.

21) Sew along the center line of the ruffles.

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Ta da! Your weekend is now confirmed!

I had some extra material, so I made a little fabric rose. I was going to pin it on to the shirt at the shoulder or the hemline, but… well, it just looked really lame. So I turned it into a cute ring instead, by following the steps from my tutorial on felt flowers.

To make the rose part is also very simple:

1) Follow steps 15-21 to make a ruffle.


2) Fold your ruffle in half.


3) Begin rolling the ruffle up, hand stitching the bottom (folded) edges together as you go. Flip over when it’s completely rolled up, and you have a little fabric flower.

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As you read this, I’ll be at PAX in Seattle, further confirming my weekend and getting very little sleep but having a blast. More on that later. For now, either get crafting or, if you are also at PAX, stop by the LoadingReadyRun panel and say hello!

1 Comment by admin on September 3, 2010
filed in Flowers, Geeky Goodness, Sewing, T-shirt Modifications
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Moustache on a stick – version 2.0

A few weeks ago I did a quick and easy tutorial for moustaches on a stick (which, if you didn’t know, are très à la mode these days as well as being great for a fast escape or some on-the-side spy work during your lunch break). Everything is, of course, better on a stick. Consider caramel apples, kebabs, those ginormous lollipops you were allowed to have like, once during your entire childhood and it was bigger than your head and you never quite finished it and the edges got all fuzzy but it was still pretty much the best thing ever. Stuff on a stick just rocks.

So. Moustaches. On sticks.

This is a tutorial for moustaches on a stick once again, but of a more convincingly hairy variety. Sort of akin to that fuzz on the giant lollipop, but in a more positive way, being as moustaches are supposed to be hairy.

You may want to do a quick readthrough of my other two tutorials involving needle felting before trying this one out. Or don’t, and just give it a shot, make it up as you go, and try not to stab yourself with the felting needles. Because ow.

What you’ll need:

  • raw wool rovings in various moustache appropriate colours (Hint: pink is most definitely a moustache-appropriate colour)
  • yarn or embroidery floss matching your wool colours
  • thick foam (for doing your needle felting on top of)
  • felting needles (Always good to have two, in case you break one. Also, they come helpfully in multiple sizes.)
  • bamboo skewers (aka sticks)
  • scissors
  • hardened felt, or cardboard, or those sheets of rubbery foam they sell in dollar stores
  • superglue
  • spray fixitive OR hairspray

Putting it all together:

1) Start with a strip of wool roving a bit longer than you’d like your moustache to end up. You may want to mix a couple of colours together, or you can just use one.

2) Tie a piece of similarly coloured yarn or embroidery floss around the middle of your rovings. Trim the ends and, with a few stabs of the needle (Note: do this and all other needle felting on top of your thick foam), mix the ends in with the wool. This is the back side of your moustache.

3) Flip the roving over. From now on you will only felt from this side. Stab the wool repeatedly, getting it to felt together and take the shape you wish your moustache to have.


This is where you can check out those other needle felting tutorials for some tips and details on the process.

Don’t mess around too much with needle felting the tips of your moustache – we’ll use the hairspray to shape those bits later on.

4) Add a little more wool over the front of the moustache where the yarn shows. Tack it down with your needle to cover up the yarn.


5) Cut a piece of hardened felt or cardboard or dollar store foam stuff that is a bit narrower and a bit shorter than your moustache.


6) Apply superglue to one end of your bamboo skewer and place that end on one side of the back of your moustache. Then apply glue to your felt/cardboard/foam stuff cutout and place that on the back of the moustache overtop of the skewer. Press down. Allow to dry completely.


7) When the glue is dry, go outside and douse your moustache with spray fixitive or hairspray. This will allow you to shape the ends of the moustache – give them a twirl if you’d like – and to make the whole thing stay in place and keep its shape.


NOTE: Let the whole thing air out and dry before you “wear” it. The superglue/fixitive combo is more likely to give you a massive headache than any kind of high.

The thanks for this project goes to my mother, who tried out the technique in the first place. She and Rosco now both appear to be convinced that they’re Yosemite Sam.


No Comments by admin on August 28, 2010
filed in Felt, Jewelry & accessories, Wearable, needle felting
tagged , , , , , , , ,

monsters of cuteness

The art of creating monsters is a varied one. For some people it’s as simple as a little drunken procreation. Others slave away in dripping cellars, stitching together bits of this cadaver and that one and waiting for a thunderstorm. But my method is quite different from both of these, and is clearly superior due to the involvement of brightly coloured felt.

Also, you can wear them.

What you’ll need:

  • felt – two bright colours, a bit of black and a bit of white
  • paper
  • pen or pencil
  • small circular objects to trace (use your thread bobbins)
  • thread – white, black, and in two colours that match your bright felt colours
  • scissors
  • straight pins
  • [optional] pin back or hair clip or hair barette

Putting it all together:

1) Find a circle of appropriate size (I use one about 1 1/4 inches across) and trace it onto a piece of paper.

Then fold the circle in half, and draw half of your monster (whatever you want that to look like) around it. Think about tentacles, tails, antenae, oozing pustules… it all depends on the sort of monster you want to make. If you want a tail or something else that only goes on one side, just cut it off one half of the paper once you unfold your template.

2) Cut out your paper template. Then pin it to two pieces of your main bright colour of felt and cut around the template.

Note: Keep the scraps from cutting out your monster!

3) Cut some smaller circles for the eye. One tiny black one for the pupil (I just freehand this one) one medium coloured one for the iris (from your other colour of felt) and one larger white one for the eyeball itself. Tracing the bottom of your thread bobbins works really well for this.

4) Grab your various colours of thread. Sew the black pupil to the coloured iris and the coloured iris to the white eyeball.


Last, take your white thread and make a couple of stitches on one side of the pupil to look like a bit of reflected light and give the eye some more depth and detail. Then sew the eyeball to one of the coloured monster cut-outs.


5) Take the scraps of felt you kept from step 2 (cutting out your monster) and cut them into tiny little pieces.

6) Now pin the two sides of your monster together and sew them up using small, even stitches. But don’t sew all the way around!


7) Before you finish sewing your monster’s two sides together, use the tiny cut up felt scraps to stuff the monster. Then sew the rest of the two sides together.


8) If you wish, sew a pin back or barette or hair clip to the back so you can pin or clip your monster to your bag, your head, etc. Or maybe sew him onto a headband.


  • To sew a nice snap clip onto the back, put your snap clip down on a scrap of felt the same colour as your monster.
  • Draw a line around the snap clip, a little ways away from the edge.
  • Cut two of these, and cut a small slit at the thick end of one.
  • Sew the non-slitted piece to the back of your monster.
  • Stick the snap clip’s small skinny end through the slit on the other piece, then sew this other piece to the first one. Ta da!

9) Command your monster to stare at people on the bus, making them uncomfortable. Though frankly, they’re more likely to just coo over him. Or her, of course.

To make monstrously adorable finger puppets, simply leave the bottom end of your monster unsewn, and don’t stuff him.




1 Comment by admin on August 21, 2010
filed in Felt, Sewing, Wearable
tagged , , , , , , ,

homemade envelopes: fewer chemicals, more character

Why do they make the gum stuff on envelopes taste so nasty? Are they worried about kids practicing substance abuse with envelopes? Because if so, I think that’s pretty unfair to all the kids who, like me, grew up in smaller towns in places like Kansas, where there aren’t hookers and blow on every corner and you have to make your own fun.

Anyway. The point here is that envelopes taste nasty when you lick ‘em shut. Which naturally leads to the conclusion that you should avoid that gross taste in your mouth by making your own envelopes. Also, it’s really easy to make envelopes. You’re kind of being suckered if you’re buying them from the store. Just saying.

There are 4 basic parts to an envelope: The body (front), the back, the closing flap and two tabs on the side of the body that hold back and front together. Just take an old envelope apart, stare at it for a minute, and you’ll pretty much know what to do.

What you’ll need:

  • pen or pencil
  • ruler or straight edge
  • scissors
  • paper (Used, upcycled paper is great for this. Try using old book pages, magazine pages, sheet music, maps, ads and brochures, scrapbooking paper or even plain old computer paper. The trick is just to make sure it’s strong to hold whatever you’ll be mailing. I don’t like construction paper because it weakens and tears easily along folds.)
  • glue stick
  • double sided tape (optional)

Making a template:

1) Decide how big you want your envelope to be. Then draw a square or rectangle that size. This will be the front of your envelope.

2) Draw two narrow rectangles (about 1/2 inch) along either side of the square or rectangle you just drew. These are the tabs that will hold the front and back of envelope together, making it an envelope.

3) Directly below the main square or rectangle, draw another square or rectangle of the same width, but slightly less high. This will be the back of the envelope.

4) Directly above the main square or rectangle, draw your envelope’s closing flap in whatever shape you want. Just make sure it’s the same width, of course. You can bring the flap to a point, make it a rounded flap, make it straight across, whatever.

5) Cut out the entire shape.

Other considerations: You may want to round or otherwise shape the corners of your side flaps, or of the envelope’s closing flaps, or of the back flap.

This is your envelope template. Trace it onto the piece of paper you want to make into an envelope, then follow these steps:

1) Cut out the envelope.

2) Make folds between the closing flap and the main body, the main body and the back flap, and the main body and the side flaps.

To make folding easier, especially with heavy paper, I use a ruler and a pen or pencil to make an indent along these lines before folding them. Don’t use scissors to make score lines as that might weaken the paper and cause the envelope to tear open. Just use a ball point pen and press down hard, or, if you don’t want visible lines, use the tip of a mechanical pencil without any lead sticking out.

3) Fold the side flaps inward and go over them with a glue stick.

4) Fold the back flap up, over the side flaps and press down until the glue holds everything in place.

5) (optional) Place a line or two of double sided tape on the inside edge of your closing flap. If you don’t have double sided tape you can just glue the envelope shut once you’ve filled and are ready to mail it.

6) If the paper used for your envelope is too dark or busy to write on, glue little rectangles of white or light-coloured paper on the front for the sending and return addresses.

That’s all there is to it. The real fun comes in making envelopes in unusual sizes or dimensions, making them out of really fun, unusual or funky paper, decorating them or personalizing them for whoever you’re sending them to. It’s one of the simplest crafts, it’s practical and useful, and it’ll keep those envelope-licking delinquents off the streets.

No Comments by admin on August 14, 2010
filed in Paper Goods, Reused/recycled materials

lacy bodice greeting card

I like making cards, particularly cards that are a little different from everyone else’s. (Otherwise what’s the point – why not just buy someone else’s cards?)

I came up with the idea for this lacy kind of burlesque bodice card while thinking about pirates. Actually, I was making another card, a pirate card (see below), and I started to wonder what a really girly pirate card would look like. It’s not a direct line (my thinking never is), but that thought pattern turned into this card.

So, try it out! It’s wonderfully open ended; leave it blank and people can write as sweet and flowery or as racy and sexy a message as they wish. Just please don’t sell it. Cuz that’s, um, my thing. You’ll have to come up with your own sexy paper goods for that.

What you’ll need:

  • a blank card (or cardstock to make one, and a matching envelope)
  • pretty paper in 2 coordinating colours
  • plain white or undesirably coloured printer paper or cardstock (for making your template)
  • ribbon in a colour that goes with your two pretty papers
  • a pen or pencil
  • scissors
  • a hole punch
  • a good glue stick
  • ruler
  • clear nail polish
  • a paper doily or some lace
  • [optional] scrapbooking eyelets, an eyelet setting tool and a hammer

Putting it all together:

1) Make yourself a bodice template. It’s basically a rectangle with a downward curving line cut along one of the short ends.

2) Trace it onto one of your papers, flip it over and trace it again, and cut out these two shapes.

If you like, for some extra detail, take a marker and trace along the outside edge of the bodice shapes.

3) Using your ruler and pen or pencil, score a line about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in from the long edge of each rectangle.

4) Fold along this line.


5) Cut a strip of doily or lace the length of the top of your bodice pieces (minus the folded under bit).

6) Glue this doily/lace strip to the inside of each half of the bodice.


7) Set the bodice pieces aside and “distress” the front edges of your card. I do this with a stamp pad and a Q-tip.


8) When the glue on the bodice pieces is sufficiently dry, punch four evenly spaced holes along the shorter of the two long edges on each bodice half. Make sure the holes on one bodice piece line up with those on the other piece.


9) [optional] Using your eyelet setting tool and hammer, fasten eyelets to each hole.


10) Glue the folded-under flaps to the front of your card, leaving a gap in the middle between the two bodice pieces.


11) Cut a square from your other fancy paper. It should be about 1/2 inch to 1 inch less wide than your card. (I cut the top edge of this square with fancy patterned scissors for another nice bit of detail.)

12) Glue this square inside the flaps of the bodice.


13) Taking your ribbon, lace it through the holes in either side of the bodice and tie it in a bow at the top.

14) Put a bit of clear nail polish on the ribbon ends to keep them from fraying.


15) Ta-da! Inscribe sweetly innocent or terribly racy message inside, as desired.


No Comments by admin on August 7, 2010
filed in Cards - just for fun, Paper Goods
tagged , , , , , , , ,

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