How to resize a tshirt (and my first go at freezer paper stencilling!)

K, so altering a tshirt may not be rocket science, but you never know.  I've had this idea for freezer paper stencilling for awhile, but since I don't have the shopping opportunities I used to it's kinda been on hold until I could pick up two red tshirts.  Plain red.  With nothing on them.  Like, no logos or anything.  Yup.  Harder than you thought isn't it?  Okay, it wasn't all that hard.  Zellers had them.  And on sale too!  At least they had Ashton's size (I got him a 6)  But try to find a plain red t or onesie in a 6m size, especially in August!  But I found a long-sleeved t which could be re sized for O (on sale too!) in a size 2.

So obviously the first thing to do is cut up the shirt.  Trace a tshirt that fits along the arm and side seam, remembering to add seam allowance (!)  If the neck of the new shirt isn't too much bigger, leave as is. (in my case it was fine.  If you do have to alter it...um...google it?) Cut along lines.  Trace the sleeves of the old shirt along the arm seam onto the sleeves of the new shirt.  In this case the hem of the sleeves were about the same size, so I definitely took advantage of that.

So you should end up with something like this:

I used a serger for this project (hence the white thread.  Too lazy to change it) but you could easily use a regular machine and zig zag the edges afterwards.  Open up your shirt, and sew the arm seams, but not the seam under the arm for now.  You might have to tweak the curve of the arm a bit, but this is knit, and knit is forgiving.  A little stretch, a little push, and a final steam with the iron and no one is the wiser, right?  Okay, yes.  I admit it.  I cheat a lot with sewing, but is anyone actually going to stop your kids and examine their clothes reeeally closely?  I should hope not.  Moving on.  Where were we?  I think here:

Now sew the underarm seam continuing to the side seam.  Ta Da.  For those of you still trying to 'set' your sleeves after sewing the side seams, STOP.  I serged the bottom of the shirt as well so I wouldn't have to roll the hem 'cause I'm lazy like that.

A quick switch to the regular machine for the hem (yes, I switched the thread) and DONE.

Okay, not quite done.  I still had to press it. (when ironing knits don't drag the iron across, just hold in place and steam. Not for too long obviously.  When you start seeing smoke, that's a sign you've pressed a little too long...) But I had good reason not to press this right away, since I was using this shirt for my first (bum ba da bum!)

FREEZER PAPER STENCIL

Yay! Lots of tutorials for that floating around blog land for these, so I won't give you a step by step for that, but I will show you the finished product.  Ahem, drum roll:

(see how pretty the hem is now?) I'm so proud of myself for pulling this off with the first try!  And Ashton looves them! (Olivia just wanted to eat it, go figure)  They weren't really in a posing mood, but I did get this shot of them:

Anyways, hope this was marginally helpful to somebody...

my crafty side is already filling up with more freezer paper stencil ideas...it's so easy and fun!