After I found the tutorial for the DIY maxi skirt that I featured last week, I started hunting for more DIY maternity clothing tutorials and got nerdily excited to start making some of my own clothes.
I found this top on DIYMaternity.com and loved the mix of solid color and floral print.
It also reminded me of a tutorial I saw a while back from Merrick’s Art that was a knockoff of an Anthropologie shirt:
I decided to combine the two ideas and COMPLETELY winged it on this top. I’m so lucky (and glad) that it turned out ok!
Materials:
- 1 solid-colored, non-maternity tee in longer length (mine was a $7 stretchy Merona tee from Target, size M – my normal size)
- 1/2 yard cotton jersey print of your choice
- thin elastic
How I did it:
- To start, I cut out the back of my t-shirt by cutting up the side seams, up and around about 1/4 of the back of the armhole and straight across the shoulder blades.
- Then I cut out a rectangle from my floral fabric that was about 3″ wider than what I had just cut out of my shirt and a good 4-5″ longer.
- I found the center of my floral fabric on the top edge and created two pleats.
- Then I sewed that edge along the cut in my t-shirt that went across the shoulder blades.
- I attached the rest of the floral fabric to my t-shirt by slowly pinning and trimming along the armholes (since the shape was curved) and pinning and sewing down each side of the t-shirt.
- When it was all attached, I trimmed the bottom of the floral fabric to meet my t-shirt at the sides and to dip down into a curved shape in center back. I left the edge unhemmed because I like how it looked with a raw edge (which isn’t a problem since jersey doesn’t fray).
- To finish the top, I added some thin elastic to the sides of the t-shirt, going about 1/2 the way up.
Because I added extra width to the shirt by making my floral print wider than the original shirt back and thanks to the shirred sides from the added elastic, this non-maternity shirt now fits my maternity belly with room to grow!
My favorite thing about this shirt is how comfortable it is. The Merona tee was super soft to begin with and I don’t feel stuffed into this at all – important at this stage in the game…
Next week you’ll see how I made a DIY jersey maternity skirt from the same floral fabric – I’m on a roll!