Long Sleeves to Short in Ten Minutes or Less

K has this shirt. It's just an Old Navy tee with long sleeves. She loves it and was set on wearing it outside one morning when the forecast was for sun and 90 degrees. I said "how about we make it short sleeved?" She blinked for a moment and smiled. "Oooooh-kaaaay!"

So here's what we started with. K doing the slow-exhalation-when-will-my-shirt-be-done thing.

I hacked the sleeves shorter. A little longer than I'll need in the finished product, but I needed something to hold on to as I pull this under the presser foot. Two strips of 1/4" elastic the length I want the new sleeves to be.

Turn the shirt inside-out. I ironed a crease into the shirt sleeves so that I'd have a line to follow while stitching. You could also use a water soluble pen to mark it. The machine part is kinda impossible to photograph without three hands. Start by tacking the elastic at the starting point and once it's securely attached to the shirt, pull the elastic out to meet the end of the shirt sleeve and hold those together firmly. Stretch stitch down the length of the elastic. You're basically pulling from both directions and also watching to make sure you're not catching any other parts of the shirt in the stitches.

Since K was quite literally breathing down my neck, I didn't bother trying to finish the edges.

I'd been thinking about doing this to a few boxy-sleeved tees of my own. Now I realllly want to do it. So quick to do! It makes winter clearance racks/thrift store winter stuff a little more interesting when it's 90 outside.

Completely unrelated to cute sleeves, we have an update about Skirt Week Prizes. First of all, as far as crafty prizes go, they're pretty awesome. Second of all, we're going to wait until Tuesday to post the sponsors as we still have a few that need to get images to us. Please don't spend all weekend moping. Enjoy your holiday! And when you need a pick-me-up to escape post-holiday-weekend-blues, we'll be all over it.