Old to New

My favorite fabric to create clothes for my boys has become adult clothing- especially old shirts. There is just something wonderful about getting to skip hems and instead lining up patterns to maintain the previous hemline. Not only does it save time but it allows me to almost always use white thread in my machine as well as my serger because all the stitches are found inside the garment.

So a few months ago while visiting my parents I received a bag full of shirts my dad was planning on donating.  I was beyond ecstatic. The thing about my father is he is a tall guy which means his shirts are big which of course is wonderful when you want to cut them apart to use the fabric. My favorite of the bunch was the polo below. I have been contemplating different uses for the shirt but when Mae outgrew all his long sleeves but one in the last month, the polo suddenly had a purpose.

Last July I had drafted a pattern for a baseball tee using this tutorial over at Make it and Love it. However the three tees I had made based on this pattern have long been outgrown. Not wanting to redraft the pattern I just cut the shirt out, adding a quarter inch all around, crossing my fingers it would be big enough. Not having used a polo for a tee shirt before I wasn't sure what I would use for the neck. However, since the shirt was an XL the sleeve binding from one side was just long enough to use as ribbing.

I had bookmarked this tee over at mer mag and started cutting out rows of triangles just to get about 9 triangles in before I was over it. I realized I had a star punch (meant for paper) which would be perfect to speed the process along. I used the freezer paper tutorial found here at Made.

There is a sense of a classic crewneck pullover to this tee that took me by surprise as I photographed the final product. This being said, I love the way the tee turned out and am glad that the old polo found a new life.