Monday, May 3, 2010

Fixing a Too-Big V-Neck

Firecracker and I stopped by a garage sale last weekend.  I'd given her 50 cents before we left, so she could choose something.  She came home with these:
Of course, what little girl could turn down a red flowy shirt with a heart made out of little bits of shell...never mind that it was a few sizes too big.  She wanted to wear it right away, but it kept slipping off a shoulder, so it needed to be fixed...and right away.

It turned out the collar had a fairly wide facing (is that what it's called) on the back of the collar.  I snipped a little slit, so I could put elastic through it.
Then I pinned the facing to the shirt with the elastic as close to the seam as possible.
Next, I sewed a casing with the elastic already inside it.
Then I pulled the elastic until it was as gathered as I wanted it to be and sewed short seams to hold the elastic in place.
The finished collar looks like this.  I used 1/4 inch elastic.  A slightly thinner elastic would have been even better, but this is what I had on hand.
Also Firecracker asked for "ruffled sleeves" and they needed to be shortened anyway, so I used the super easy technique I described here and got this.
And Firecracker was quite happy with the result.
A tutorial for the skirt, made from recycled pants, can be found here.

6 comments:

  1. Cute girl in a cute shirt! I wish some of my high school students would fix their necklines like this. :)

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  2. Quick thinking! And I really like the shirt with your alterations a lot better than the original. Much cuter and so flattering. Great idea and great job!

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  3. What a great idea and great solution!

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  4. So clever!! I also checked out your skirt tutorial, so funny...similar skirt, completely different method!

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  5. Great idea and I still love that ruffle edging you do :)

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  6. Good fix. I have a couple little girl shirts that have way too deep a neckline I have been trying to figure out how to fix. I like this idea!

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