the true-blue maternity tee

Ok, well one week later I'm finally sharing my second maternity shirt refashion. I might be partial to this one for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to:

1. I love the color.
2. I love the soft knit fabric.
3. I love where the collar rests.
4. I love the short sleeves.
5. I love the gathers at the empire waist
6. It was a breeze to make!

This Eddie Bauer tee is another of the treasures among the clothing passed along from some of Luke's family. And while I love the long sleeves, I decided to shorten them because the rest of my pregnancy will continue through the warm spring and summer months. When I googled something like "t-shirt maternity refashion" I was directed to a very cute tutorial on imakestuff4fun.blogspot.com. There I followed her excellent instructions save for a few alterations:

1. Mine is short-sleeved rather than sleeveless.
2. I made the belt, but decided the shirt looked better adorned in its own simple glory.

My favorite part of this particular tutorial was the suggestion to use a nice-fitting shirt that I already have to alter the top of the new shirt. I simply took a beloved t-shirt, laid it directly on top of the long-sleeved tee, then traced along the short sleeves and down the side of the bust. Finally I added 3/8" to these new seam lines for a seam allowance. Using old clothing to size for alterations is a technique I've seen in lots of other tutorials, but this was my first experience with it. I'm hooked! It takes all the guess work out of the sizing and also takes like 3 minutes to complete.

Here I am at 21 weeks with my new maternity shirt! Though I have to say that I think the baby has grown exponentially in the last week and this profile shot might be a bit modest at this point.

PS- Happy Fasnacht Day tomorrow!