Refashion T-shirt Into a Hooded-T!

Hey guys. This is an instructable just giving you an option on how to take two old t-shirts and put them to create a somewhat new look. Hope you find it useful!

As this is my first instructable please give me any feedback as to how I can make it better and easier to understand! Thanks!

Step 1: Old T-shirts

The supplies needed for this project are as follows:

2 old t-shirts
Pair of scissors
Sewing machine (or you can sew by hand if you know how and don't mind the amount of time it would take :) I do it all the time!)
Pins (for holding material together)
A hooded shirt (to use for the pattern of the hood)



First thing you want to do is find two old t-shirts that you don't mind cutting up and putting together to create a new look.

Next is to figure out which t-shirt  you would like to use as the base for your hoodie-T and which one you would like to use for the hood and sleeve ends.

For my base shirt I used an old shirt I got when I was on holiday in Hawaii. (It was originally dark blue but I decided to bleach it to make it a much lighter sky blue. This is not something you need to do with your shirt unless you want to.)

For the hood and sleeve end parts of the shirt I used a shirt which I had tye-dyed for a Homecoming event at my University. ( I made the mistake of picking up a pack of V-neck t-shirts instead of the crew neck ones. Not something I would really wear.)

Let's get started!

Step 2: Tracing

Lay your hoodie/sleeve shirt flat on a countertop. Then place the hood part of your actual hoodie on top of the shirt itself as shown in the picture.

You are going to take a pen and outline the hood shape. If you can figure out how to draw the hood pattern without the hood feel free to do so.

I always add 1/2 between my pen line and the hood itself to give room for the seam when I sew it.

Another thing to keep in mind when cutting out your pattern is to try and cut the fabric so the part of the hood your face goes through lines right up with the bottom hem of your t-shirt.
This works nicely when your finished because your hood will already have a nice hemline and you wont need to sew it up!
Takes another step out of the process.

Also if you plan on continuing with the sleeve part of the project make sure to center the hood pattern in the center of the shirt so as not to cut the sides of your hoodie/sleeve shirt.

Step 3: Cut Cut Cut!

Once you are finished tracing your hood onto your t-shirt, take a pair of sharp scissors and cut along your line.

Remember to cut through both layers of the t-shirt when doing this step. ( It saves us from having to trace and cut all over again on the other side.)

Also remember it doesn't have to be perfect, this is a fun refashion project so your just your best to re-invent an old shirt instead of throwing it out...It's all trial and error.

Step 4: Sewing

I lost a few photos when I made the transfer so I'll do my best to explain this final picture.

Here we can see the finished result of sewing the hood pieces together.

What I did was simply pin the two pieces together and run a stitch only along the curved part of the hood (if you have an extra hoodie on hand use it for reference)

The final result is the hood turned rightside out (meaning the way the hood will look on the shirt at the end of the project.)

For those of you who have a pattern on your shirt before you cut it will need to take your pieces, once cut, and flip them so they match up in size and shape but also so the pattern sides are both facing each other.

So if I'm wearing a shirt that has heart patterns on the front of my shirt and on the back, after I've cut the pattern out I will flip the pieces so the hearts are touching. This will leave the outside part without pattern (or in some cases a much more dull version of the pattern)

I hope I made this clear, if you have any questions please send me a message! I will gladly help.

Step 5: Cut Collar Off of Base Shirt

I'm afraid this is yet another picture that didn't make it through the USB onto my computer.

In this step you are going to take your base shirt and just like it sounds, you are going to cut the collar off of the shirt.

Just try to keep the cut right below the hem. You don't want to cut down much farther then than that.

Step 6: The Most Confusing Part!

This is the most confusing part of the project and there was no clear way I could think of to take a picture to make it any clearer so please bear with me.

This is the part of the project where we have to attach the hood to the base shirt itself. This is where patience and pins come into play.

First thing you will need to do is to take your base shirt and turn it inside out.

Next you will want to take your hood piece and turn it rightside out (so if you were looking at it, it would look like a normal hood with the sewn edge of the fabric on the inside of the hood)

Now take the bottom edge of the hood facing right side out and line it up with the open edge of the collar on the backside. (backside meaning where the collar would run along your back if you were wearing it)

You will start by lining it along the backside of the shirt until you have lined it up all the way along the front collar...All you need to do is make sure the bottom edge of the hood line up along the top edge of the open collar.

Don't worry if the hood doesn't meet all the way in the front.

Now keeping the two edges lined up together and keeping them there - push the hood down into the opening of the collar so it turns inside out. (meaning if you were to open the collar you now be able to clearly see the seam and open ends of the fabric where you sewed them together.)
(also it would have a bowl like appearance when looking down at it)

Now take your pins and pin the two edges together.

Take it to your sewing machine and sew them together.

Once again it doesn't have to be technically perfect just somewhat close. I usually do this part with a 1/4 inch seam from the end

Looking at the picture below you can see the Backside of the base shirt flipped inside out with the hood already pushed into the open collar and pinned.

Make sure to line up the seam on the hood with the middle of the back collar. An easy way to do this is to fold the shirt backwards in half and to line up the seam and this point.

Once you have found the point, take your pins and pin outward from there.

Step 7: Hood Attached!

When you are finished sewing trim the long threads and flip your shirt inside out.

There you have it! A hooded-T Completed!

I wasn't satisfied with just a hood and decided to take it a step further.

Step 8: New Sleeves?

I really wanted to do something else to the shirt to make it pop a little more and originally I had planned to reconstruct the sleeves with the purple shirt but instead decided just to add on to sleeve edges.

Remember the hoodie/sleeve shirt and cutting your hood out of the center bottom of the shirt so as to keep the sides in tact? Well here's where they come in handy.

Now simply lay out the hoodie/sleeve shirt so it lays flat and you can clearly see the hood pattern missing from the middle.

We are going to take out Base shirt and place the edge of the sleeve alongside the edge of the hoodie/sleeve shirt as shown in the picture (make sure when you do it, you do it so the egdes are lined up with one another.

Step 9:

Now when doing this part we want to place the sleeve of the base shirt close to the armpit of the hoodie/sleeve shirt)

This way we can measure the total length of fabric needed shirt by simply pulling the hanging part of the fabric up and over the length of the sleeve as shown in the picture. ( this lets us make one long cut of fabric so we can wrap it around the sleeve and sew)



Now where we see the top of the Base shirt rests on the hoodie/sleeve shirt we make a mark on the purple fabric.

And as you can see in the picture the bottom hem on the shirt actually lines up perfectly with the top of the sleeve.

Now we look at the base shirt sleeve and make a mark on the purple fabric right where we see the stitching begin on the hem.
That is our mark for how wide we should make the fabric strip.

Next cut out the strip of fabric. I cut through both the top layer and the bottom layer so I could get a thicker sleeve end that wouldn't fray.

Because you are cutting about an inch in from the side, you only have one side of fabric to sew because the other side is already folded leaving you a nice clean edge you don't have to worry about.

Step 10: Attach New Sleeve End to Base Shirt

Now that we have out fabric cut out we need to attach it to our base shirt.

Simply take one end of the strip and attach it to the bottom side of the base shirt and pin. 
Now wrap the fabric around the sleeve pinning it as you go.


Now all you have to do is run a stitch along the inside of the sleeve where we can see the pins lining up.

As well as another stitch a little further out to secure middle of the strip to the old sleeve. It makes the sleeve a little stronger and less likely to tear off.


In the picture you can see that we only have to sew the inside and not the outside edge because in the last step we cut the strip from the side of the shirt which was already folded over. 

Step 11: Final Result! a Hooded-T!

And there you have it! The final result! A two toned Hooded-T!

I hope this instructable was clear and made sense. I can definitely understand it's a bit confusing. I do appreciate feedback, ecspecially on what I can do to improve!

This is my first DIY so let me know how it goes!

Hope you enjoy!

Thanks!

Please feel free to upload any other cool ideas to do with this or what you end up making with your t-shirts! Would love to see them!