Sewing Tutorials! : Self draft your own t-shirt!

Self drafted T-shirt Tutorial

If you have kids you know how fast they grow and how expensive it can be to buy them new clothes almost every month! Well what if I told you, you could make your kids T-shirts based off of one they already have? Crazy right? Or you may be thinking yeah right? Well this is no joke! I am going to teach you how to draft a t-shirt pattern and how to sew the shirt in as little as a half hour! Are you ready to save some money and make your kids wardrobe or maybe even your own? Well ready or not here come the instructions!

Materials:

Knit fabric

sewing machine

cutting mat

rotary or scissors

half hour of free time

Step 1: You will need to grab a t-shirt and lay it out on two pieces of paper. (you will notice my shirt is much bigger than the pattern I have created. This is because that shirt I didn't mind getting marker on and didn't plan on keeping it once my youngest had outgrown it anyways). You will need to trace around your shirt or past it if you are designing your pattern like I am. Notice I don't trace around the neck or the arms.

Step 2: Once you have finished tracing your pattern, you should have something that looks like this:

Step 3: You will need to draw in your neck and your arms, you will notice that I use a half circle for the neck and a 1/4 oval for the arms. You may also notice that I put the way the stretch needs to go as well as what kind of shirt it is that I am making on the pattern so I know what this pattern is once I put it away.

Step 4: You will need to make your arm pattern. You will need to lay your sleeve on the edge of a piece of paper and trace around it.

Step 5: Just like the shirt body pattern piece I write stretch and what it is this pattern piece goes to on the piece.

Step 6: You will now need to cut your pieces out of your fabric. If you are going to embroider on them now is the time to do so.

Step 7: Put the two shirt bodies right side together and sew the shoulders

Step 8: You should have something that looks like this after you have sewn the shoulders

Step 9: Sew your sleeves onto your shirt body, make sure that the ends match up and the center of the sleeve matches up with the seam on the shoulder. Do this to both sides!