a reconned shirt that doesn't suck (hopefully!)

i know, i know, i JUST posted! but i'm trying to get caught up here, okay?

this is actually a really really old project! back in june 2007 Leah from craftster.org came to vancouver to shoot a HGTC craft show (She's Crafty - i think it's off the air now, which totally sucks. or maybe i can just never find it!) i picked her up at the airport and we went to daiso and had a great shopping trip hanging out with each other. it was so fun to see daiso through new eyes, and actually read some of the packages tht i'd usually skip over. we found multi-packs of disposable underwear. multi-packs! who needs multiple pairs of disposable underwear? and the english translation on it was REALLY bad, something about passion overwhelming you!

anyway, that's getting a bit off topic! but leah and i met up, and then i took her to her hotel. as i dropped her off, she gave me this AWESOME shirt from Magpie, the store in boston that she's one of the owners of.


unfortunately the image was printed on an american apparel shirt, which might as well be kids sizes in terms of fitting me!

so i decided to alter it. i really dislike how obvious a lot of t shirt alterations are when it comes to making them bigger, so i really wanted to find a way make the finished top be cohesive. with a different shirt, i might try to find fabric that matched the ink on the silkscreen, but it was just a little too light for me (hella light for me!). instead i looked for a fabric that went well with both the base shirt and the silkscreening colour, and used it.

i cut the shirt open along the sides and cut out the sleeves. i also cut out the crew neck, because i can't stand having shirts that high up! i cut strips for the sides, and new sleeves to fit into the future arm holes.

i finished the neckline hem using the new fabric in a slight v. if possible i'd have liked to go lower, but the image was in the way!



the sleeves are a bit puffed at the top, because i love that! and as a bonus, it made it much easier in terms of fitting in the new sleeve!


i finished the hem of the sleeves with strips cut from the original sleeves, just to tie it in a bit more.



i think the end result is a lot more cohesive than your usual recon. but i might just be fooling myself, what do you think?