How to Get More Fabric out of a T-shirt

How I Get More Fabric Out of a T-shirt.

I've been using tshirts for sewing for a couple of years now. I made tops from my too small tshirts for my girls. They were from Hawaii and so cute I hated to throw them away. I cut the front from the back and cut out the patterns from those pieces. My patterns were full size pieces and not halves.

We spend summer weekends in northern lower Michigan.  A local screenprinting shop sells their extras and seconds for 94 cents! These are good quality XL tshirts that often have quite a bit of blank fabric. I've used them to make the girls clothes, drawstring bags and even tops for me. I wanted more fabric and flexibility to cut out patterns from them. I made tiedyed items from them and the thread used to sew tshirts doesn't dye with Procion dyes.

It occurred to me that if I cut up the shirt differently I would get more room to layout patterns. Often there are parts on a shirt that you may want to avoid as well.

Here's what I do:

First, cut off the ribbed neckband.

,

Open out the neck and cut open the shoulder seam.

I cut off the the sleeve, leaving the seam with the sleeve.

This is it cut up, I open out the shirt and match the armholes and the front and back are folded in half.

I've now laid out my child size pattern pieces, front, back, sleeve and neckbinding. Since most tshirts don't have side seams I can put short sleeves here or,

use the cut open sleeves for that.

I don't use hems on shirts that I plan to dye. The thread used isn't cotton and won't dye with procion type dyes. I do use hems on shirts that I'm not dyeing.I hope that this tutorial is clear.