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Our experience indicates you should allow at least 6 men’s medium-sized shirts for each yard of fabric required by your pattern.

Wash the shirts in hot water and tumble dry to preshrink the fabric. You can use it strategically when designing your own dress. If you get skipped stitches or see holes in your fabric, try a new needle or a stretch needle. Identify the pattern pieces for which you’ll need multiple layers, and duplicate them in paper.

Materials:

White T-shirts several, depending
on pattern and size
Thread
Sewing machine
Fabric scissors
Pins straight and/or safety
Dress pattern choose any you like
Notions, zipper, buttons, etc.
as called for by your pattern
Sewing machine knit needle (optional)

Directions:

Step 1: Create or select a pattern for your dress.
If using a commercial pattern, pick one appropriate for jersey fabric. To save time, arrange your pieces so that the bottom hem of the dress is constructed from the bottom hems of the shirts. Learn how to make an adorable, versatile dress using white cotton T-shirts — comfortable, repurposed, and perfect for years of reuse.

Step 3: Check for stains and holes.
Lay out your shirts in a clean and very, very well-lit space. Her daughter Lauren Kroiz is a Los Angeles-based crafter raised to believe that everyone has the right to enter into whatever union they want wearing whatever they like.

TIP: Showing this pattern to people will help you collect T-shirts from those fearful of seeing you married in a pile of rags. If dress pattern pieces are small enough, you may want to use 1 big T-shirt section. Don’t place the sections so that the grain falls on a diagonal (this will make your dress hang differently), and avoid mixing sections with vertical and horizontal grain, which may create uneven stretching and bagging.

Step 5: Examine the pattern.
Depending on your modesty, you may want to use 2 layers of T-shirt. You may arrange the pieces with the grain on the horizontal or vertical axis.

About the Authors:
Donna Kroiz is a Virginia-based seamstress.

Save the scraps to use as rags. (Be sure that your pins go through only 1 layer of the shirt.) This is a good time to find a fastidious friend for a second set of eyes. Be sure to check that each shirt is approximately the same shade of white to ensure your finished dress won’t look patchy or yellowed.

Mark each stain and hole you find with straight or safety pins. Begin cutting T-shirt sections to fit pattern pieces.

Be careful to keep the sections oriented so that the grain line of the fabric runs vertically from the collar to the bottom hem of the shirt. Efficient women often married in white and then dyed their dresses to wear again. This is especially important if you’ve collected the shirts from a variety of people. Knits are often easily torn apart at the seam, so it’s important to choose an appropriate stitch. If you can’t arrange your sections to utilize the existing hems, try using a fusible interfacing to stabilize the fabric, and practice several times before attempting to finish the hem of your dress. Move to the sewing machine. Though it may be a bit tricky, it creates a polished look that can be otherwise difficult to achieve without a serger. Mark these holes and stains separately. Be sure to allow for at least ½” overlap if you’re piecing the sections together. Be sure to check the fit several times throughout construction as the T-shirt sections may have more or less stretch than you imagine! Iron each shirt so that you can easily distinguish stains and holes from wrinkles.

Stitch together the sections that make up each pattern piece using white thread. Use bleach or another type of fabric whitener to help ensure that each shirt is the same shade of white.

Fit the remaining T-shirt sections to the remaining larger pattern pieces.

Step 4: Deconstruct the shirts.

Remove the sleeves and the collar of each shirt.

T-Shirt Wedding Dress
By Donna Kroiz and Lauren Kroiz

Until the late 19th century, brides generally bought the fanciest dress they could afford and then wore it throughout their marriage as an evening gown. With the rise of mass-produced clothing, white became the popular color — maximally impractical, it signified the owner would wear the dress only once. When sewing the T-shirt sections together, both piecing and seaming, it’s important to avoid stretching the material or you’ll end up with uneven puckering. This will both attach the section and finish the edge, because the T-shirt fabric, unlike a woven fabric, is not likely to unravel.

Practice seaming with scrap T-shirt fabric. We used 2 in the bodice of the dress, and used a slip for the skirt. You may reconsider! If creating your own pattern, remember T-shirt fabric is soft and has some stretch, so it will look best draped and loosely fitted.

Step 6: Sew the dress.
Pin the sections to the pattern. Slightly overlap the sections about ¼” and use a small zigzag stitch along the edge of that overlap.

Sew the sections together following the pattern instructions. You can also use a zigzag stitch, but be careful to reduce its length so it doesn’t sew through when the seam is stretched.

Your machine may also have a setting for a stretch stitch, used specifically for sewing knits, but be aware this seam will be very difficult to remove so you should baste-stitch the seam first. It was the 70s.

Step 7: Have a beautiful wedding.
Afterward, store the dress to show your children, or follow women of a previous era and color your dress with any cotton dye to wear again and again. Cut around the stains and holes you marked, salvaging the biggest pieces you can from each shirt. ticklishtortoise.com

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Turn each shirt over and examine the back.

In the 21st century, there’s no need to choose between anti-consumerist values and looking cute in white on your wedding day. Identify symmetrical pieces; our dress improved when we created a V pattern in the skirt by lining up symmetrical sections of shirt.

Step 2: Collect white T-shirts.
The number of T-shirts you’ll need depends on many factors, including how damaged the shirts are, the size of the person who gave them to you, what pattern you select, and how big you are! She eloped in jeans and a polyester shirt. We used 2 parallel straight seams to prevent the 2 pieces from tearing apart. Having extra shirts is a great idea and will make the project easier to complete.

TIP: Consider patchwork as a kind of decoration that adds visual volume to your
dress body. A table set up outside or under natural light is vital, especially if you’ll have an outdoor ceremony. Not only does this reduce the sewing for you, but it’s ideal in sections such as the bodice of your dress, where you want construction details, such as gathering, to be the focus.

Original post by Goli Mohammadi

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Knitting and Crochet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.