capsleeveon3

Hi, y’all! I love clothes that are made to fit my body. I love drawing on clothes. I ALSO love getting away with wearing the same shirt (at least) twice in one week. Drawing inspiration from all of these factors, I came up with a design for an easy-to-make cap-sleeve reversible shirt. This DIY is a fun two-for-one! Let’s get to it.

What you’ll need:

  • A T-shirt that is true to your size
  • A pen or pencil
  • Large sheets of tracing or drawing paper
  • Scissors
  • Straight pins
  • A sewing machine or needle and thread
  • About a yard and a half of stretchy knit fabric (I’d recommend a four-way stretch fabric like this one or this one because they’ll give you room to breathe, and will make it easy to stretch the finished shirt over your head without the seams or neckline ripping or hurting. It also gives you some leeway to make mistakes, because you don’t have to be quite as precise with sewing or measuring!)
  • Fabric markers, patches, glittery fabric paint, or basically anything you’d wanna use to decorate a T-shirt

How to do it:

Refer to this photo for Step One through Step Four.

Refer to this photo for Steps One through Four.

Step One:

Fold your T-shirt in half vertically, so that the front collar faces up and the sleeves are stacked on top of each other, like in the photo above. Place the shirt on your drawing or tracing paper.

Step Two:

Make a mark on your paper at the high point of the collar (A), and one at the high point of the shoulder seam (B). From A, trace down the shoulder, past B, and down the sleeve. Your line should stop where you want make the bottom edge of your cap-sleeve (C)—about a third of the way down the sleeve from B.

Step Three:

Make a mark on your paper at the center point of the bottom of the T-shirt’s collar (D), then trace down the fold of the shirt, ending where you want to make your shirt’s bottom seam (E). I decided to make my shirt crop-top length, so I stopped tracing about three-quarters of the way down the fold.

Step Four:

Mark your paper under the armpit part of the sleeve (F). Trace down the outside seam, ending at the spot that lines up with where you decided to make your bottom seam (G).

Refer to this photo for Steps Five and Six.

Refer to this photo for Steps Five and Six.

Step Five:

Fold the sleeves of your shirt toward the center fold, and draw a gently curved line on the paper that starts at B and ends at F.

Step Six:

Draw a straight line on the paper that connects C to the line you just drew between B and F. The place where that line ends will be H.

Refer to this photo for Steps Seven and Eight.

Refer to this photo for Steps Seven and Eight.

Step Seven:

Pick up your shirt and draw a straight line that connects G to E.

Step Eight:

Congratulations, you’ve got a pattern! Label it and cut it out.

Step Nine:

Step 9

Fold your fabric in half, then line up the long, straight side of your pattern (noted in the photo above) with the fold. Trace the pattern on the fabric with a pen or pencil, then cut it out. Repeat this step three more times—you’ll end up with four identical pieces of folded, cut-out fabric that look like this:

Step 10

Step Ten:

Step 10

Unfold each of the four pieces of cut-out fabric. Stack two pieces together, so that all the sides line up with each other exactly. Use some straight pins to secure the pieces to each other, then use your sewing machine or needle and thread to sew the pieces together. See the blue dotted lines in the photo above? You’re going to sew a straight line through the pieces of fabric in the corresponding places. (In other words: Sew all the way around the pieces’ perimeter, except for the parts labeled “shoulder” in the photo.) Stack the other two pieces of fabric together, and repeat all the same steps. Now you’ve got the two sides of your soon-to-be reversible shirt!

Step Eleven:

Step 11

Turn both sides of the shirt inside out through one of the “raw,” open seams at the shoulders. After you do that, the seams you’ve already sewn together should be hidden on the insides of the pieces.

Step Twelve:

Step 12

Stack the two pieces together, so that all the sides line up with each other exactly. Pin them together, and stitch straight lines on the side and shoulder seams (where you see the blue dotted lines in the photo above).

Step Thirteen:

Step 13

Success! You’ve got yourself a shirt! Now use your fabric markers, patches, badges, fabric paint, or whatever decorations suit your fancy to deck out your shirt. I drew flowers on the front of one side of my shirt, then turned it inside out and drew plants on the front of the other side:

Step 13-5

There you have it: style for days! ♦