Most Popular Repurposing Tricks of 2011. Men's Shirt Makeover. June 16th, 2010 Email 56 users recommend men's shirt restyle I have seen lots of men's shirt makeovers lately and decided to try my own! It is basically two rectangles of fabric with an elastic casing at the top and two straps. Supplies: 1 mens button up shirt, size large 1" wide elastic You will also need to measure your bust and down your side (measure from your armpit to how long you want the shirt to be - mine was 16"). This is the shirt I started with. 1 - Take off the pocket. 2 - Cut off top half of the shirt at armpit. 3 - Cut off sides seams of shirt, it will probably be much larger than you need it. 4 - Sew side seams. 5 - Sew casing at top for elastic. 6 - Run elastic through casing, sew elastic together and sew casing closed. 7 - Mark where you would like the straps to go. 8 - Use 1 of the pieces you cut off the sides earlier to make the straps. 9 - Cut off the curved end off the side strip. 10 - Cut this piece down the center so you have 2 strips, about1 " wide and 15" long.
Mandi, Ten minute no-sew recycled t-shirt bag! Tutorial time!
I got a gig teaching a recycled t-shirt project at the library a few months ago, with a request for a recycled tee bag – the only bags I’d made from tees in the past had required sturdy sewing, and I didn’t want hand-sewing to be the only thing holding the bottom closed in a class version of the bags, so I started brainstorming about some kind of hand-sewing-friendly or no-sew bag idea…. and here’s what I came up with! The simplest version of these bags is great for smaller tees, or the more light-weight kind of girl-tees – just turn the bottom of the shirt into a drawstring and tie it closed! As you can see, even with a not huge tee, this will still leave a significant hole in the bottom of your bag, but for purposes like grocery shopping, this size hole shouldn’t really matter… But to make smaller holes, just make more than one of them!
Here’s a bag bottom with 2 holes: How to make gift bags from newspaper. When I bought something at a store recently, the clerk handed me my purchase in a bag made from a newspaper.
I liked it very much and had to make some more—thus today's DIY recycled newspaper project: gift bags made from the Wall Street Journal. You can vary the dimensions, of course, but here's what I used to create a bag that's 5" tall, 4.5" wide, and 3" deep. Stack two sheets of newspaper on top of each other.
This will be a two-ply bag for extra sturdiness. Cut out a rectangle that's 15.5" wide and 8.25" tall. Fold a flap 1.25" down from the top. Cut two pieces of cardstock or chipboard to 4.25" x 1", then glue them on the widest two panels just under the top fold. Put glue on the outside of the 0.5" tab and bring the left-most panel over to form the body of the bag, aligning the cut edge of the panel with the folded edge of the flap. Upend the bag so the 2" flap is now up. Put glue on both flaps and fold them inward to form the bottom of the bag.