Tees reborn

I haven't done much re-purposing in my sewing, but it's a big presence on many sewing blogs. You take a man's dress shirt and make it into a skirt, or turn a woman's tee into a child's dress, etc. Last week I plucked some of my husband's old cotton tee-shirts from the rag pile, and turned them into baby pants.

On the left, you can see one shirt being cut up into pants. I've taken to copying pattern pieces onto tracing paper so that I can preserve all the sizes that come with the original pattern.

The pattern (Butterick 5326) has just one piece (cut twice) so it takes very little fabric - a size L man's shirt was perfect. The pattern is nothing special, though I do think that ankle elastic is worthwhile for baby pants. Since babies are rarely vertical, this keeps the pants on the legs! The teal pair on the left are from the same fabric as my earlier baby tights - the orange and green pairs are from old tees. If you have stained shirts (there was something like white-out all over the green tee), just sew the wrong side of the fabric facing out. This gives a more interesting surface texture. Plus, the inside fabric may be more brightly colored than the right side.