Sewing Basic T-shirts

This past weekend was great! We had General Conference and Easter over the same weekend,which usually means lots of yummy food and candy! Unfortunately this year, we all got sick. So, instead, it meant extra nap times and a lot of plans canceled so I could stay home with the kiddos and let them rest. That being said, I had a lot of "stuck at home" time this week and even though I had a small cold as well, when you're a mom, you can't just lay in bed all day. So you kind of end up pretending you're not sick until eventually you somehow get better.

So... with all my "free time" this week while the kids were sleeping or probably watching too much TV (it's allowed when they're sick! lol.), I decided to try something new and sew a T-shirt for David. A friend of ours gave us a bunch of T-shirts he was getting rid of and while John kept one or two, he really didn't need a ton of new T-shirts, so most of them got put in the donate box.

A little while later, I was looking through David's next set of clothes (since he just turned 5 and is pretty much ready to go up a size in shirts) and realized, I could probably make him some T-shirts on my own! And thus, the donate box was emptied again... Sorry D.I....

To figure out how to sew a shirt, I found a great tutorial on how to make a basic T-shirt on a website called Made Everyday with Dana! There's a video with it that is great and it turned out being a lot easier than I thought it would be! I ended up making my own pattern though since I needed one size larger than hers.

Here's the shirt I started with as well
as the pattern pieces cut out and
the shirt right before it was done.

Since the first one turned out so good (minus the neck being a little wide and not as flat as I'd have liked...) I decided to make another one! I pulled out some Men's tank tops that were in the bag (yeah, so not John's style which is great 'cause I think they're gross!). For one of them, I had to use a different shirt with it so I had enough fabric for the sleeves. Here's how it turned out!

Using another tank top, I decided to cut the fabric for the sleeves instead and used a plain white T-shirt for the front and back of the shirt. This got a lot more complicated when I had the idea to make it a raglan t-shirt (yeah, didn't know that official term until I was looking up the shirt style yesterday. Haha!)

I ended up experimenting a little as I went. I made a new pattern for the sleeves and tried my best to match it to the white fabric so I could cut it. In the end, it turned out better than I thought it would too! Which seems to happen a lot when it comes to sewing... unless I fail miserably, and then it becomes a braided scrap rug... haha!

Well, with 4 new T-shirts done and ready to be worn, I think I'm going to take a break from sewing and move on to painting the kitchen... again. But when I do start sewing again (probably in a few weeks), I'll be moving on to Brooke's wardrobe! I already have a couple of cute dresses in mind which I'm excited to get started on!