Pregnancy Alterations - Shirts

When I was pregnant the first time, I thought it was awesome that I could fit into a lot of my pre-pregnancy clothes and not have to worry about buying an entire new wardrobe! Fast forward to my third trimester and I realized I was actually just stretching out a ton of my shirts... Oops! Haha! 

And now in my current pregnancy (Number 5!), I fully switch out almost my entire wardrobe as soon as I'm done with the first trimester and some things I switch out even sooner!

With that being said, it can be so hard to get new pregnancy clothes on a budget! And it's even harder if you don't go for those giant t-shirts every day...

Well, over time, I've found some easy ways to make nonpregnancy clothes work for me and look and feel great!

So for this next while, I wanted to share some recent clothing alterations I've made and show how easy and affordable they can be.

And what came to mind first was blouses!

(Yes, it was Christmas time, and yes, I didn't sweep. And that's actually way nicer than it normally is! Haha!)

This particular shirt I recently found at the thrift store for $5. It's long enough to cover my growing stomach and hopefully leave some extra room for the third trimester. Another plus, it's made out of a slightly thicker cotton fabric that has a slight stretch to it! Not spandex stretchy, but enough to not feel tight on my stomach.

Here's how this shirt looked before I altered it...

2nd or even 3rd pregnancy me would've just worn it like that. But 5th pregnancy me was tired of looking like I was wearing a very short mumu. And yeah, the difference is more subtle in this picture (I was 4 months pregnant), but will be much more obvious the further along I get.

Ready to hear how simple this alteration was? All I did was add elastic to the back. That's it.

To do this, I first put the shirt on (inside out... I had to redo this because I forgot to put it on that way the first time) and pulled it back to where I wanted it to fit. I used two pins to mark both sides of where I wanted the elastic and then, while still wearing the shirt, measured the length the elastic would need to be. You could also pin it with safety pins if you're worried about poking yourself. 

I then cut a small elastic to the right size and pinned it where I wanted it (on the inside of the shirt). I made sure to gather the fabric evenly and pin it down a few more times.

This part is the trickiest part, but still doable if you're a beginner sewer. Start by sewing a few stitches and backstitching the elastic to the shirt to get it started. Then as you sew the elastic to the shirt, pull the shirt a little so the elastic is stretching. Depending on how much you had to gather, the fabric may or may not lay completely flat when you do this. Once you get to the end of the elastic, backstitch again a few stitches and then sew back to the end of the elastic before cutting the thread. 

(Just quick a tip. You can use any color thread, but it will show less if the thread color matches the shirt you are sewing.)

And that's it! Super quick, simple, and affordable!

One thing to remember when choosing a shirt to alter is to choose an easy fabric to work with that has a little bit of stretch to it. Make sure the shirt will cover your stomach when it's pulled back and is long enough to give a little extra room to grow. You will also want to make sure the shirt fits well up top but isn't so tight that it won't allow for some growing room there as well.

This was a great option for a shirt that's too casual for a pregnancy sash but that also needed some help with the fit. And it only took 5 pregnancies to figure that out! Haha!