Your basic black T-Shirt doesn't have to be boring! I used a four pack of men's undershirts to flip and repurpose into a bunch of different looks that are cute and fun. Plus, all of these methods are newbie friendly; you don't have to be good at sewing or at style to do any of them. They're all easy, adorable, and sustainable, too!
Watch my video below for the quick low down and give this blog post a read for those extra details.
This is how I made a bunch of different looks with just the four men’s T-shirts in this box.
Some of them are a success, some of them… are not. You can wear them untucked and loose and baggy, but since I am prissy, I will not be doing that. Here are the four ways I transformed these shirts and the looks I made with them.
Method 1: The Knot
This first method takes the basic shirt as is. No alterations required. This gives you one basic shirt as a backup and a style twist for when you want it to look better.
Gather up the fabric in front and tie it so that you define your natural waist. Since this is a men’s undershirt, it might fit a bit looser on you. I have a very large bust and a narrower waist, so tying it up shows off my figure while still looking casual.
I personally like this look with leggings, so I feel like I have a shape. Perfect for an athleisure look that you can wear while sauntering around your virtually abandoned apartment complex or going to the grocery store and panic checking off your grocery list in the empty toilet paper aisle because apparently we live in hell.
Another look I love is to wear it over a loose T-Shirt dress. Double T-shirt. It looks super cute and it involves almost no effort!
I am aggressively hourglass shaped, so sometimes T-shirt dresses make me feel chunky and square. They tend to float over my curves in a way that makes me look like I don’t have any. I’ll solve this by layering it under an undershirt and knotting the tee so I can show off that sexy, sexy hourglass. Not only is this look comfy, but it means that you don’t have to worry about wearing an actual underwire bra, and isn’t that the dream?
Method 2: The Chop
Our next look is “The Chop,” where we will create a crop. Chop off the bottom of the shirt and voila, an easy crop top look. You could very easily just chop off the bottom of the shirt and cut off the sleeves a little, but I wanted to make this look more polished and purposeful. I gave it a finished hem and sewed up the cuff.
You’ll start by putting on the shirt, marking off where you’d like the hem to end with a safety pin. Once you know where you’d like the crop to hit, fold the shirt up to that line, leaving about an inch of seam allowance.
Painstakingly hand sew the entire hem because you are too dumb to figure out your sewing machine.
Chop off the extra fabric.
Then realize that the sewing machine isn’t that hard and redo the hem with that instead for security. Pretend you didn’t waste an hour hand stitching it.
You may also want the sleeves to be a little shorter with a cute little cuff. It’s annoying to keep refolding the cuff, so what you’re going to do is fold it over twice, pin that in place, and then hand stitch it in place.
You’ll get a sleek, effortless look if it seems like the cuff just happens to stay perfectly folded all the time. Don’t machine sew this because of your aforementioned alarming dumbassery. I chose four points to stitch where it would be least noticeable, and now my sleeves are forever cuffed.
The cropped length and the cuffed sleeves also makes this perfect for layering under strappy dresses.
Method 3: The Hoping for the Best and It Only Sort Of Turns Out All Right.”
My original idea was to make a V-neck that is also a crewneck, a la those choker tees that were so popular in 2016. But I did not do a good job. I had to keep improvising and starting over. Each time I basically hated what I had made and hoped a little tweaking would change the result. In the end, I only barely liked it, but it did make for some cute looks. Just had to deal with the mistakes.
Put the shirt on, mark where you want the neckline to end with red sewing chalk.
Attempt to use a plate to trace the curve, realize that is dumb and draw a new line instead.
Anyway, once you cut the raw hem you’ll realize it hits too low and makes you look like your boobs are going to fly free so you are going to sew a seam up the center.
This won’t help at all. I didn’t like the raw edges, either. I decided to try to add some binding to the edges of the neckline for a nicer look.
Only the thing is that, for me, now the neckline wouldn’t fit right. In the process, I stabbed myself in the fingers several times and got a lot of fabric caught in my machine where it shouldn’t have been. I made a whole taped edge by using the original hem, folding it over, and sewing it in place at all of the edges. I didn’t know how to join them at the three angled points. I tried to fold them up and sew them together to make it look like a clean, purposeful edge. This, unfortunately, tightened up the neckline in the wrong spots. When I put it on, the choke part wouldn’t lay flat against my neck like a choker, which ruined the whole purpose of this flip. So, I decided to scrap it all and start over.
If you want to avoid my mistake. just be really careful when you are cutting out the triangle. Make sure you don’t cut too far into the edges of the ribbed collar, that way it will look more purposeful.
Now, I could have lied and just started as if I had always intended the next steps to happen, if I wanted to. But I think the series of failures is funny, and I wanted to be honest. I’m not that great at DIYing all the time. I get frustrated seeing other people seem to do it perfectly every time.
Although, if you think about it, they probably don’t do it perfectly every time. They probably just cut out the mistakes and don’t show them. This is both a cautionary tale and an honest one. I’m not always good at what I try to do, and that is my truth. It still turned out fine, though.
This time you’ll cut off the entire top edge, removing the sleeves and the collar. Cut straight across so it looks like a tube top.
To make sure the tube top stays in place, you’ll want some elastic. If it is social distancing time and you can’t leave the house, you can steal it from another item of clothing. I used my scissors and seam ripper to tear the elastic waistband out of a pair of shorts I had from high school.
Here is the secret to cutting out elastic: do not cut through the elastic first. You should first cut into the waistband, without cutting through the elastic, cut the fabric all the way around so you can see whether the elastic was sewn into the garment or just hanging out in the tube. Mine was sewn down at the top and bottom, so I had to carefully rip out the stitches along either edge. If you tear through the elastic partially, you’ll make it weaker, so don’t go too fast when you rip.
Once you’ve torn out the stitches, you’ll probably be left with a loop of elastic and you’ll be able to see where it was originally sewn together. This is where you should cut the elastic apart. The elastic tends to be a little weaker here just because of wear and tear, so it’s best to have the only cut be at this single point.
You can certainly cut it at any point, you just may have to reinforce the joining spot before you weave it into your new top. Usually, the best place to start is by ripping out the stitches at the side seams of the waistband. Cut the elastic so that you are now left with a long strip.
Hem the top edge of the tube on your sewing machine or by hand, but make sure not to completely finish it off. You want to leave a gap for when you eventually weave your elastic through.
When you fold the top over to make the top hem, pin it with enough room to fit your elastic through, and then some. My elastic was about 1.5” wide, so I pinned my hem to be about 2” wide as I am prone to errors. This will create a casing along the top that is wide enough to fit the elastic.
You’ll feed the elastic through the top casing you just made. You should have a slit left where you did not complete the hem on either side so that you can run the elastic through. Attach both ends of the elastic to their own safety pin. Steadily feed one end through the top by pulling it by the safety pin. Make sure to keep the back end of the elastic from ever going through the fabric tube. Once you have fed the entire elastic through so that it is coming out the other side, you will sew it together at the end.
Now it is a tube top that will stay up.
I was worried about what to do about wearing a bra under this, so I added some straps by braiding together leftover strips of black fabric.
I sewed them into place with the sewing machine and hoped I chose the right spot.
In the end, I didn ‘t super love how it looked on my body, but I found that it looked even cuter when layered over a basic white tee. That not only allowed me to wear a normal bra, but it also gave those cute ‘90s vibes.
Method Four: The Pom-Pom
The truth of this method is that I ripped off the trim from another garment and added it to my sleeve cuffs for a cute detail. I tore the pom-pom trim off the pair of short from my last method.
Carefully rip the extra trim off with your seam ripper. This should leave you with a few long strips of trim, depending on the garment you steal your trim from.
I used a tape measure to see the circumference of my shirt’s arm opening so that I would know how much trim to use on each sleeve. I folded the sleeve to lay flat and measured the length. When folded, my sleeve was 7” long, so I knew I would need about 14” of trim to go around the circumference of each sleeve.
Pin the trim in place and hand stitch it in place. This is just the safest way considering all the detail. You don’t want to accidentally sew down a pom-pom. All done!
In the end, I had four different shirts: the original tee, a cropped version, a tank top, and another with pom-pom trim. I loved all of these looks, and I loved that while each look was essentially a twist on a black tee outfit, each one had been customized by me. I know that the crop is the perfect length because I did it myself. I didn’t have to spend extra money on trim because I took it from something I already owned, and I knew that the shirt as is was already a great fit. I hate when you buy black items, but they either aren’t the same color black or some of them are less opaque than others. Using a bunch of crews from the same pack really solves this problem for me, too.
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