Levi's shirt gusset

I try to keep a lightweight cardigan or overshirt in the car during the summer for those times when we're already out (running errands, going to doctor appointments, etc.) and we spontaneously decide to stop someplace to eat. Most restaurants keep their summertime air conditioning set to what feels like sub-zero, and I've reached the age where I get uncomfortable when I'm cold or sitting in a draft, so putting on an extra layer goes a long way toward keeping me content on those occasions.

We recently had a day where we were out and about, and we decided it was a good opportunity for us to eat out before heading home, except I didn't have a cardigan with me to put on in the restaurant. So, before heading to eat, we stopped at a shop and bought me this lovely lightweight denim/chambray Levi's shirt to slip on over the t-shirt I was wearing.

The shirt fit me well enough off the rack (I could button it down the front, etc.), and it kept me comfortable at the restaurant, but it was a snug fit, and I could tell that I would like the shirt even more if I added gussets for some extra ease. 

So, a few days later, I searched online and found some lovely light blue floral-print chambray fabric. I ordered 1.5 meters, which was way more yardage than I needed for the gussets, but I figured that I would eventually find a use for the remaining fabric. 😂

Even though the floral fabric isn't stretch chambray (which the description says), it's exactly the color and print that I envisioned using for the gusset panels on my Levi's shirt, so I'm happy with it. (The shirt doesn't stretch, either, so it's actually better that floral fabric isn't stretchy.)

Shirt and fabric before cutting:

First, I measured the length of the side seams (from hem to cuff) to know how long the gusset strips would need to be. My shirt measured about 29 inches from hem to cuff, so I cut my gusset strips from the floral fabric about 32 inches long (to give myself plenty of length for seam allowances) by 7 inches wide.

Before cutting the shirt open along the side seams, I had to remove the cuffs. This step made me a bit nervous, because I hadn't sewn anything with nice cuffs like this before.

I used my seam ripper and worked slowly and carefully until the cuffs came free from the sleeves. I set the cuffs aside to be reattached later.

Whew!! 😅

After the cuffs were removed, I took a couple of pins and pinned the tabs (the ones that secure the sleeves when they're rolled up) out of the way inside the sleeves, to keep them safe during the shirt cutting and gusset sewing.

Then it was time to cut the shirt open along the side seams. Using my sharpest scissors, and again working slowly and carefully, I cut as close as I could on either side of the bulky side seams, removing and discarding the strips from the old seams.

The next step was to zigzag stitch along all the raw edges of the shirt and the gusset strips, to minimize fraying later.

Now it was time to start sewing the gusset strips together with the shirt.

I finger-pressed about a 3/8-inch hem along one short edge of each gusset strip and then stitched across that hem to secure it. Then I put one side of the shirt and one of the gusset strips together with right sides facing, carefully lining up the bottom edge of the shirt with the bottom (hemmed) edge of the gusset strip, then sewed the pieces together from hem to cuff using a 3/8-inch seam. I repeated that process for the other three long seams. Then I pressed the seam allowance toward the gussets and topstitched over the seam allowances to secure them.

With all that work done, the only thing left to do was to reattach the cuffs. But, of course, the sleeves were now about 6 inches bigger around than they used to be, with the added gussets. So to get the sleeves to fit the original cuffs, I stitched two rows of basting stitches in the seam allowance of the ends of the sleeves and used the basting to gather the cuffs to a size that would fit in the cuffs. I pinned the inside edge of each cuff to the corresponding sleeve and stitched along that inside edge to secure the cuff to the sleeve. Then I enclosed the raw edge of each sleeve by positioning the outside edge of the cuff in place and topstitching to finish.

Smock vest from men's denim shirt

Here's a quick sewing project for converting a long-sleeved denim men's shirt into an oversized smock-style vest or apron with lined pockets.

I started with a long-sleeved denim men's shirt like the one in the photo below. (I forgot to take a "before" photo of my shirt, but mine looked almost identical to the one below.)

To make a pattern for the large patch pockets, I used my husband's Carhartt vest as the prototype. These pockets are large and deep, so there's plenty of room for stashing a phone, or my hands, or whatever else I would like to carry in there.

Husband's vest

I laid my husband's vest out flat on my fabric cutting table. Then I took a sheet of newspaper and laid it over the pocket. Using a pencil, I gently traced around the perimeter of the vest pocket to transfer its shape onto the newspaper, then I cut out that pocket shape. I placed the newspaper pocket over a piece of lightweight scrap cardboard I had in my craft stash and, using a ruler and pencil, I marked a half-inch larger (for the sewing seam allowance) to the size of the newspaper pocket around all the sides, then used the ruler to connect those lines, which are the lines for cutting out the pocket pattern on the cardboard.

Originally I was going to make the pocket pattern using a sheet of thin cutting-board vinyl, similar to the ones shown in the photo below, because it's rigid-ish and durable enough for multiple uses as a pattern guide yet thin enough to be cut to size with scissors, but I couldn't find the sheets today that I know I have in my craft stash somewhere, which I bought years ago for this purpose, so I improvised and used the lightweight cardboard instead. Either way, it creates a pattern piece that can be reused for future projects where I want to have this same type of pocket, and, either way, the pattern piece is thin enough to store with my other pattern files.

Vinyl cutting-board sheets

There are many DIY tutorials online for how to upcycle shirts (or even jeans!) into a vest. One tutorial that I enjoyed was this one by Broken Ghost DIY on YouTube. The way she cut off the collar in her project is very similar to the technique I used here. I carefully trimmed off the flap portion of the collar of my shirt, leaving the collar band below intact for a sort-of mandarin collar effect.

Next, I carefully cut off the sleeves, cutting outside of the seams where the sleeves were sewn onto the shirt (cutting on the sleeve side of the seams, in other words). The tiny bit of fabric left behind after cutting off the collar and the sleeves will fray in the wash and lend a rustic touch to the edges.

I laid my pocket pattern over one of the sleeves and was gratified to see that there was enough fabric in the upper part of one sleeve to allow me to cut out two pockets. If one sleeve hadn't been big enough to cut out two pockets, I knew I would have been able to use the tops of both sleeves to cut one pocket out of each. But since I was able to cut both pockets out of one sleeve, now I have another whole extra sleeve to use as scrap fabric for another project later.

For the pocket lining, I dug into my fabric stash and selected two pink bandanas just waiting to be needed for something. I think the pink bandana fabric makes a nice accent/contrast to the blue denim. All together, I cut two pocket fronts out of the denim and two pocket linings out of the pink bandana fabric and then pinned the pieces together with right-sides facing.

I sewed the pocket fronts to the linings, leaving an unsewn gap of a few inches at the bottom of each pocket for turning them right-side out.

After sewing, I trimmed the excess fabric at each corner, then turned the pockets right-side out and pressed them smooth with my iron. With the seam allowance pressed to the inside, I topstitched along the bottom edge of each pocket to secure the areas that were previously left unsewn for turning the pockets right-side out.

To position the pockets on the front of the shirt, I laid the shirt flat on my cutting table, with some of the buttons fastened to keep the sides even, and then placed the pockets where I thought they looked good, using my cardboard pocket pattern as a guide to ensure the pockets were level with each other. I pinned them in place and then tried on the vest to see if the pockets were positioned at a comfortable height for my hands. Once I had the pockets pinned exactly where I wanted them, I sewed the pockets in place with my sewing machine, backstitching several times at the beginning/end to reinforce the pocket openings.

A peek inside the pockets

The nice thing about making pockets this way is that there are no raw edges exposed anywhere, because they are all hidden between the pocket fronts and the pocket linings.

And, just like that, my smock vest/apron was done and ready to wear! 

 How the arm openings look after laundering. I love the frayed effect!

 

Knitting my T-shirt

I bought a funny T-shirt on Amazon that all you knitters out there can probably appreciate.

But after wearing it a few times, I decided that I wanted to try knitting the instructions printed on the shirt to see what it would look like. 

I studied the instructions and decided that the design was worked over multiples of 4 plus 3. So I cast on 35 stitches for my sample and started knitting.

Here's how it knits up. To me it looks like a reversible faux ribbing created by the twisted slip stitches. This stitch sequence could make a very nice scarf. Fun!