My boyfriend loves graphic tees. And I love boys’ graphic tees. Girls’ graphic tees aren’t so bad, but among the lot of them are ones that say arbitrary phrases like, “Paris, France” or “Summer Olympics” or something like that with poor grungy graphics. Guys’ tees have more balls. And Matt’s a designer too, so all of his tees either have neat illustrations, sweet typography, or both. I’m SOLD! So I’ve got a Pile of old graphic tees, waiting for their second life. Here’s the first installation of The Chronicles of the Graphic Tee.

I bought a tie-dye bandeau top from American Apparel recently, and it’s freakin’ awesome (and only 15 bucks!). It’s been my default “it’s-so-effin’-hot-but-I-don’t-have-a-pool-so-it-would-be-weird-to-wear-a-bikini-top-around-so-I’ll-wear-this-instead” top, except I don’t wear it by itself out, say, to the mall, cause I ain’t no hoochiemama! But I don’t have enough shirts that are loose enough to show off my bandeau (and side torso is super sexy), so I rummaged through The Pile.

I found an old Zoo York t-shirt with a bunch of sweet type illustrations on it, and decided to make a baggy racerback tank.

1. Flip the shirt inside out.
2. Draw light lines where you want to cut with a pastel crayon (or bar soap works wonders on dark fabric) or very lightly with a washable marker for lighter colored shirts. I used a racerback tank I had as a guide, but you can be pretty loose with your lines, as the shirt’s pretty baggy in the end.

3. Cut! Then try it on and see how it hangs. You can adjust as you like here – bigger neckline, skinnier racerback, bigger armhole, etc.
4. You’ll notice that the tank top gets very loose where your waist is – it’s cause we’re girls and we have hips. To avoid frumpiness, I pinched in the fabric in to see how much I should take in on the sides, then took the shirt off and drew lines where I was gonna sew it up.
5. Run it through a sewing machine and cut off the excess.
6. A last detail I added was rounding off the bottom of the shirt with some scissors so that the shirt is longer on the front and back and comes up to a peak on the sides (see photo).

Pair it with a sexy bandeau or equivalent bathing suit-type top, and it’s perfect for those super hot and sticky summer afternoons where all you want is a popsicle and that warm breeze on your skin – not gross sweaty tight shirt. This loose tank lets the breeze pass right through, and bonus, you look cute without the sweat stains.

Graphic Tees FTW!

happy making,

Technorati Tags: bandeau, diy, jackie ngo, matt yerman, mybfcloset, racerback, tank, tie dye, zoo york american apparel

Browse Timeline

• « Racer back hoodie…
• » The Perfect Mix + Match

Comments ( 2 )

This is exactly what I was hoping to do with some my shirts! Thanks

Meghna added these pithy words on Oct 13 09 at 10:21 pm

Add a Comment