Geekphoria: DIY: Flutter-Sleeve Tie Shirt

Hey everyone! Here's a new DIY for a shirt I made earlier this week. It can be worn as-is, or over a bandeau or camisole (I've worn it with a bandeau, but in these pictures I'm wearing one of those bras that's just the cup, in order to show the cut-outs better).

The shirt I'm using here is a Star Trek shirt that I bought from Target last week.

The material is a really soft jersey knit, so I didn't bother hemming anything. There are a few stitches holding the ties together, but it's all hand-stitched--so this should be easy for people to replicate!

I first started out by cutting off the shirt's crew neck. I then rounded out the front of the neck (into a pseudo-boat neck shape), leaving the back as it was. I left about three inches between the edge of the neckline and the hems for the shoulders. This may seem like it's too small, but because of the tie in the back the shoulders remain, well, on your shoulders.

I then cut horizontally across the back, about halfway down the sleeve line. The mat in the following picture shows where I cut.

I then cut straight down from the horizontal cut to the bottom hem, stopping at the waist of the shirt. This creates a flap on the back. I then pulled this flap up into a triangle shape, wrapped it around the shoulder line of the t-shirt, and sewed it together.

Here's the flap.

And here's the back after it's sewn together.

With the back complete, I turned to the sleeves. I created flutter sleeves by cutting up from the sleeve hem to about half an inch away from the seam of the shirt and the sleeve.

I then used extra fabric--from the collar--to wrap around this cut, as shown below. I sewed the strap together, and then added a few stitches to keep in place.

Sorry for the glare. I need a better camera if I'm going to keep doing DIYs.

And that was it! It was really simple--it only took about twenty minutes to finish. Here's the back of the shirt (you can see why you may want a bandeau or something). You can also see the shoulder tie here:

And here's the front:

Here's the shirt hanging up:

And here's the back, again:

The end! I hope you guys like this cut of shirt. I have a one more shirt at home ready to be altered, and two coming in the mail! So there will be at least three more t-shirt DIYs this summer.

Here's one last shot! You can see the flutter sleeves and the ties better here (though I think this may be before I sewed it in place).