Library Tee into Shift Dress

I had some upcycling fun this week! My library recently created a collection of library swag, and we all got to choose a t-shirt to start things off. Well, I don't really wear t-shirts, so I thought about it, and ordered a 2XL long sleeved version of our in-house design (made by a coworker - our library has a long history with squirrels, if you're wondering lol) It was quite large! 

But thankfully with a bit of restyling I was able to achieve my vision for a fun shift style dress! 

I unpicked the sleeves and took down the hem, and then took a dart from the underarm to hip level (there are no side seams to work with here so I had to be careful not to create a dimple at the dart point). I find an 8" opening a good one for a sleeve, so started my wide dart there and tapered to a natural angle, about 11" down. 

Then I measured the widest and longest rectangle I could get from the sleeve -- it turned out to be about 5.5" by 18". I was able to cut four, and then stitched them together to create the ruffle for the bottom. The hardest part of this whole project was gathering the ruffle -- it's not perfect but it's good enough! 

Because it was so big, the shoulder seam was naturally dropped, so I just folded under and stitched to finish it. And the same on the hem. I actually really like it! And it is really comfy. 

I styled it with some of my black and white accessories -- it's not so punk to match everything, but I liked this ensemble. The jacket has pockets, since the only flaw with this project is that I was unable to add pockets (no side seams after all). 

The ruffle gives this just enough length to be wearable to my standards. I carefully steamed out the original hem so you can't really see the crease or stitchlines anymore, and I'm glad I did because that extra inch does the work here. This was an enjoyable project, and now I have something I'm comfortable wearing if we all have to show up in our tees on the same day in future 😄