Generation T

I had planned to get myself a little treat after taking my calculus exam, so today I went to Borders and used the 30% off coupon they sent me to buy the book Generation T, which I want to use for t-shirt reconstruction ideas. Though some of them are clearly not up my particular alley (e.g. the almost entirely backless shirt), there are some basic concepts that I find quite brilliant and look forward to trying out.

I also like to check out the livejournal t-shirt surgery site. Most of the posters are young (I'd say 13 - 25) and some of the styles are definitely not something I would ever wear, but I have gotten some good tips from the tutorials and like looking at the different things people are doing. The same woman commented on two different posts I looked at this morning and gave me wonderful hints for a couple of things - making a long skirt waistband out of a t-shirt and sewing your regular fabric to it (since I am dealing with waistband issues, this seems like a potentially great fix) and the clearest, easiest description of how to make a self-fabric binding to go around the neck and arms (I have been lazy with mine and just turned the edge over and sewn it down rather than using any kind of binding).

The craftster.org site also has sewing (from scratch and reconstructive) posts on it, but I don't like that you have to click on each individual post to see a photo of the item.

Lucky for me, Robert had several shirts get snagged on one of our kitchen chairs (which I fixed as soon as I realized there was a problem by giving the chair one of Robert's knit shirts to wear - I think the chair is happy now and will not attempt to bite Robert again) and develop holes, and he had a couple work shirts also give out on him, so I have a little stash of both t-shirts and flat cotton shirts ready to play with. I am looking forward to doing something with a white with maroon strip dress shirt in particular. (Note: I do not know if any of his red and blue striped shirts made it into this stash. I hope so.) (Note: Leo also got up on the same kind of chair I keep in his room at my sewing table and chewed off some of the plastic on the edge, so Robert gave me some clear packing tape to keep the rough edge from scratching my leg. These chairs my grandmother gave me are feisty!)

I also have a pair of black capri pants that got a bleach stain on the leg that I am going to turn into shorts or a skirt, if I can salvage enough of the fabric from the bottom of the legs or am inspired with another fabric to use as the triangular inset on the front and back. Maybe something like this? (Ah, Etsy is obviously going to be another place to look at ideas and drool over them.)