Welcome to spring, everyone! I know it’s officially been spring for about two weeks, but it hasn’t felt like spring. Today, I’m refashioning a plain white, long-sleeve jersey shirt. We’re going to upcycle this shirt into something a little jazzier, with some dip dye and lace. Another great t-shirt refashion, here we come!

Remaking a Long Sleeve Shirt with Dip Dye and Lace

Here’s a close approximation of the shirt, since I forgot to take a before picture. Except mine was, like, XXL.
First, let’s do some dyeing! I used Rit All-Purpose Powder Dye, Purple for our new Pantone color of the year, Radiant Orchid.
Following the instructions using hot water and salt, I dipped the top part into the bath …
… and came up with this!
Now the bottom half.
After drying it out (I like to sun-dry it because I think it helps the color set better), I laid it out on the floor and put a well-fitting t-shirt on top as my guide.
Here you can see the lines.
Sew up the sides with a zig-zag binding stitch. It’s a stitch kind of like this one.
After cutting the excess material from the sides, I then cut the corners near the sleeves in a perpendicular cut, near the sleeve seam.
I used my t-shirt as a guide again, and measured the shoulder seam to the sleeve, to mark where the sleeve should end.
Then, I marked from the armpit to that spot, and cut along the line. Since jersey doesn’t need to be sewn, I just left the edge raw since it’s hard to make a sleeve if it’s attached already.
The last piece was the lace part around the collar. I happen to have this shirt sitting around, so I used it’s collar.
Off it comes.
And on it goes!

Here’s the final result!



