Long to Short Sleeve TShirt Makeover

I can't take full credit for this idea, for one it seems as everyone is making tshirt makeover blog posts. All I have done is take two ideas and combined them to make my rendition of this upcycled Tshirt. I had two Walmart Garanimals brand shirts leftover from the winter, however I saw several on clearance the other day for $1. You will also need a sewing machine, 1/4" elastic, 2 buttons, and coordinating thread.

First you want to cut the sleeves off and make them a little longer than you want them.

I then took my sleeves and cut them open and cut the hemming off , and then cut each in half. You will have 4 rectangles but you can toss one to the side.

We will work on the sleeves first~Turn the shirt inside out and press the sleeve so you will have a "guide" to sew the elastic to Measure out your elastic which you want to be about 1/2 of the length of your sleeve it was a little more than 1 1/2 inches for mine. Sew the top of the elastic to the sleeve to hold into place and with your needle down, stretch your elastic to the end of the sleeve. This will gather your shirt sleeve~you might want to move the gathering around to how you like it before you sew the elastic into place. After you have it like you want, sew the rest of the way down the elastic and don't forget to backstitch at the beginning and end. Repeat this to the other sleeve.

You can now turn your shirt right side out. Lay two rectangles together and run a gathering stitch down the center and gather your rectangles to the desired length and sew to the center of your shirt. {For gathering tutorials you can reference these~there are several ways to do this but this will help you if you haven't ever tried-- with crochet thread and sewing machine,  or with a straight stitch.

Then you will want to cover up that middle, so I took the last rectangle and turned the tow ends under and edgestitched both sides.

Next I took two buttons to sew into my center. You can sew the buttons by hand or machine. If your machine does not have a button setting then you can adjust a zigzag stitch to fit into your button holes (just make sure that that the needle will fall in your holes). My machine has a button setting so I taped my buttons where I wanted them and sewed them right to the front. (you can sew over the tape)

This is a very easy project that I finished both shirts in less than 45 minutes~could have been sooner if Gabie wasn't sitting next to me.