ruffly pink shirt

I have been sewing quite a bit lately. I really need to take pictures of everything I've made, but I keep forgetting. Yesterday I worked on a little project and I actually remembered to take some pictures. Hooray!

I've had this pink shirt for such a long time--before I was even pregnant with Jed. I love the color but the shirt itself was just weird. It has a funny tendency to stretch out in the arms really easily. I would wear it for ten minutes and end up feeling like I had gaucho pants around my arms. It was just strange. I endured it while I was pregnant with Jed, but then we moved to the heat of Texas and I put it away. I was going through a box of maternity clothes a week or so ago and decided to see if I could turn the shirt into something great.

First I cut off the sleeves and pinned the edges under for the new, short sleeves.

This shirt fabric is so strange. It's a knit, but the stretchiest knit I've ever encountered. I was a little worried I was going to ruin it while I hemmed the sleeves, but I told myself to just keep persevering. The hemming on the sleeves certainly isn't my best sewing effort, but I am going to blame the fabric here. Yeah, not showing you a picture of that.

After the sleeves were hemmed, I took the extra sleeve material and cut both pieces to large rectangle pieces, then cut them into 1 1/2 inch strips. Each strip was about 16 inches long and I ended up with 12 strips. I sewed 6 of them together to make 3 long strips and left 6 short.

I wanted to make ruffles out of the strips, so I wound the tension down all the way and lengthened my stitch length out as long as it would go, then sewed down the middle of each strip. Then I pulled and gathered the strips til they were nice and ruffly.

I played around with the layout of the strips for a while til I found something I liked, then started sewing.

getting the first strip pinned down

I decided it would be easiest to sew one ruffle on at a time to avoid mistakes. Here I have 4 sewn on and the 5th one pinned.

7 ruffles all sewn on--finally finished!

The inside of the shirt after everything is sewn down.

After I got done sewing, the shirt was pretty stretched out, so I threw it in the washer to tighten things up. I forgot to turn it inside out, so I had to smash my ruffles down with a heavy book after the shirt came out of the dryer. I wore it to church today and had quite a few compliments, I'm pleased to say. I am so happy with how this experiment turned out--and now a shirt that was unwearable has been resurrected! A great addition to my maternity wardrobe!