This year, I’ve taken an unintentional break from crafting. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still worked on a project here and there, but the ideas have been piling up without much execution. I got hit with the craft bug within the last month and decided to go digging through my “unfinished” pile of half-worked-on clothes. In my pile was this shirt I started like two years ago, but the frustrating thing was that it was 90% done. If I spent a few more hours on it, it could have been finished. So I spent those few hours and busted through.
This olive t-shirt was given to me by an old neighbor. It had a few holes, was stretched out, and fit sorta funky. I have a lot of beads and so I wanted to remake this into something fun. I resized the shirt, added a new back (since there were tiny holes) with this lightweight printed fabric that I found for cheap at Joann’s, and swapped the sleeves.
For the decoration, the most important part, I had to figure out how much area of beads I wanted. I just started sewing them on to get a feel of how I wanted to execute this. With me, sometimes I just need to go with the flow before having a well developed idea.
I eventually loosely sewed a guided line across the top portion of the shirt. I gathered a bunch of green beads with a small batch of accent colors like red, silver, and spotted white. The bead layout was very sporadic; I still didn’t have a plan or pattern. I just sewed on beads until I no longer wanted to sew on beads!
When I finished the beaded top, I decided I didn’t really like the 3/4 sleeves I sewed. I cut the sleeves short, and turned the shirt into a crop top because I’ve come to realize shorter shirts sit better on me. I have wider hips and some shirts are loose on top and tight at the bottom. The more you know about what fits your body
I’ve already worn this shirt at work and received so many compliments. I kinda also love adding beads to shirts. I’ve become obsessed. This will be the first of many!
Dig up your beads and sew them onto shirts! I promise, it’s fun.
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