#39: Brown Lined Dress Shirt

Hello again! I made the project for today's post last week, but haven't had time to write a post for it, so here it is!

I found this brown dress shirt at the thrift store a few months back for about $1.

Before: Brown lined dress shirt

Before: from behind

I liked the shirt, especially the lined strips of brown fabric coming down the front, but overall it was pretty boring. So I got creative and jazzed it up a little.

First, I decided to play up the lines.....on the back! I flipped this piece around so the buttons would be on the front.

Next, I laid the shirt down lined-strips facing up, and began measuring and pinning spaces the all the way down center strip about every 3 inches apart.

Measuring and pinning

Then I folded the center strip and pinned it together at each spacing. I then took the next 2 strips on either side and pinned them together at the same spacing.

Pinning more strips

Next,  I sewed the  strips together at each point where a pin was, using a zig zag stitch with the feed dog dropped (the part that pulls the fabric through the sewing machine) so the fabric wouldn't move.

Stitching

I did the same procedure with the remaining strips on both sides, 2 at a time, until all were sewn together at the pinned points about 3 inches apart. The sewing machine was taking too long and using too much thread, so I ended up hand-sewing the last fourth of the stitches.

Lots o' stitches, lots o' rows

After all of those stitches (it actually took a pretty long time!), I opened up the space between the stitches, pulled together the fabric from half-way in between each stitch, and sewed it across each row space to the opposite row. This gave all the rows an accordion-like feel full of diamond shapes. Maybe the picture will make more sense.

Add caption

I tried to iron them to lay flat, but it didn't work. Oh well.

I took the shirt in a bit on the sides and under the arms, and I sewed the big sleeve cuff slits closed. I put it on backward, tucked in the cuffs to give it more of a jacket feel, and I was set!

Here's what it looked like again before:

Before: Boring brown lined dress shirt

And here's the after:

After: from the front

After: From behind

I liked the front more open, and liked that I had an unexpected surprise on the back as I walked by!

I imagine that when I get tired of this, it may make another good transformation into a decorative pillow ;)

I hope you liked it! I'm really excited for a few new pieces I just picked up at the thrift store. Can't wait to get my hands on them!

Until next time, blessings.