T-Shirt to Infinity Scarf Tutorial

A friend gave me two really cute shirts the other day because they didn’t fit her and when I tried them on they were WAY small.  I really liked the fabric of the cream and black stripe so I decided to turn the two shirts into one infinity scarf.  Now I am quite a collector of scarves as my friends and family know but I haven’t really made one so this was all just making it up as I was going.  I know people probably have shirts that they like because of the color or pattern but just don’t fit anymore so this is the way to give that shirt new life and keep it in your wardrobe.  Here’s how I did it…

This was the shirt before….really cute and from Forever 21 which is one of my favs.  Oh well…

Lay it on a cutting mat to get some straight lines.   If you don’t have one you can still do it but you will have to be a little bit more careful.

Line up your ruler where you are going to get the most fabric out of it just right by the arms and cut with your scissors or a rotary cutter.  If you fold the shirt in half it makes it easier and faster too.

Repeat on the other side.

Lay the shirt flat and cut the neck off…sounds kind of gruesome huh?

Now you have two pieces of fabric.  The front and the back piece.  Set them aside.

Take your next shirt and do the exact same thing as the first.  I like how one of these shirts is solid and one is patterned.  You could do two different patterns and that could be really fun too!  Maybe next time.

Now you have two pieces of the other fabric. 

I put my two pieces side by side to make sure they were close in size and they were.  If yours isn’t just do a little trimming.  These are jersey so you can boo boo a tiny bit and no one will ever know with this scarf.

Now this is my first real time sewing stretchy jersey fabric and I was very scared.  I took a test piece and played for a while.  I used a little zig zag stitch because my sewing machine manual told me too!  haha  It worked very good.  The only advice I can give about jersey is to let the machine pull it through while you guide it.  Don’t pull it through or it will be puckered in some places.  When you feel confident move on to the real deal.

Here they are sewn together.  Now repeat with your other two pieces.

Voila.  Now you have two pieces to work with.  I sewed them together long ways so that the stripes were all on one side and the black pieces on the other.  Make sure that you are sewing all the wrong sides on the same side.  I didn’t hide all of my seams because honestly I don’t know how with jersey.  🙂

What you end up with is a tube of fabric.  Next time I would probably make mine a little longer but you learn by doing I guess.

And here’s the finished product!  I think it turned out fun and it a great lightweight summer scarf that you could also wear into fall.  I am probably going to make more colors now that I figured out I could do this.