Band T-shirt makeover

I love the Drowning Men and recently I purchased a Drowning Men t-shirt.  The illustration on the front of the tee is by far my most favorite of the other Drowning Men tees I own.  After trying it on, I decided to add a little edge to the rest of the it, so I broke out a raglan sleeve pattern and went to work.

Here's the before...

and here's the after...

I had to improvise with the back of the shirt.  Initially, I wanted to weave the back much like this shirt. However, when I started to weave the back with black jersey knit, I felt like it was taking on a checker board appearance instead of the basket weave look which I had hoped for.  So, I decided to shelve the weave project for later and improvised the back by adding stripes.  

Shirt makeover details

First, I added the raglan sleeves to the shirt.  Here's how...

1.  Trace the raglan sleeve line to the shirt front.  I used a raglan t-shirt pattern that I already had in my sewing patterns stash.  Place the shirt front pattern on top of the tee, lining up the side seams and bottom of armscye.  This shirt did not have a side seam, which made it a bit difficult to line up the pattern.  

2.  Here you can see the armscye and neckline has been traced onto the shirt front.

3.  Repeat with the shirt back using the raglan shirt back pattern piece.

4.  Cut out shirt front and back.  NOTE: I did not cut the side seam.  Just the neckline and armscye.

5.  Trace Raglan sleeve onto sleeve material and cut out.  Sew underarm seam of raglan sleeve.  Sorry for the bad pick.  It was night time and with kids you pretty much sew when you find time in 5 minute spurts.

6.  Pin sleeve to shirt, matching shirt underarm seem to sleeve underarm sleeve and sew together.

7.  Finish the neckline by sewing on a neckband made of the raglan sleeve material.

Back of Shirt

Now for the back of the shirt.  Like I mentioned before, I improvised the back.  Therefore, there aren't any decent pics to show the process.  I'll do my best to explain.

1.  On back of shirt, mark cut lines 1.5" apart.  Please pay no attention to the strips of black fabric shown on the side of the shirt.  I was going to weave them into the shirt. 

2.  Cut on marked lines.  Be sure to not cut all the way to the side seams.  Leave about 1/2" of fabric un-cut between the side seams and the cut lines.  Your shirt should now look like it has strips of fabric.

3.  The above pic shows 2 steps - cutting the strips and adding the black fabric.  

To make the openings for adding the black fabric, cut every other strip off of the shirt.  (I then finished the raw edges, which was more of a decorative step.)  Place black fabric fabric behind the open areas and topstitch the black fabric to the shirt.  This created the wonky stripes.  

I did not sew black fabric to the top open strip area, because I liked the look of it being open there. 

4.  You can leave the hem alone or add your own hem.  I changed the hemline to be an uneven hemline by shortening the center front by about 2" and gradually curving the hem to the side seams to match the back hemline.

Cheers,

Jamie