Tutorial Tuesday: Turning a Thrift Store Dress Shirt into Anna's Adventure Undershirt! (Part 1)
Hi guys! Welcome to my first ever tutorial, which I am dubbing Tutorial Tuesday! On this Tutorial Tuesday, I'll show you the very simple process I used to turn a $2 blue button down collared dress shirt into Anna's adventure undershirt from "Frozen." :)
If you're anything like me, the prospect of putting in buttons and buttonholes still puts you on edge, even if you have an automatic buttonholer on your machine. I started out with a stretch turtleneck as my original undershirt for Anna, but it lacked all of the details and the Mandarin style collar that is so popular in the movie's wardrobe design. So what to do?? Well, I went to Goodwill and found a blue button down shirt that went nicely with my color scheme and modified it just a bit to look more like Anna's! See how under the cut. Warning: many many pictures to follow!
So this is the shirt I purchased. The sleeves were only 3/4 length so I took those off and found a matching cotton to make full length sleeves. If you have the same problem I did, this is an easy fix. Just take off the too-short sleeves and the cuffs. Set the cuffs aside to work with later.
First things first, pop that collar (you may also want to iron the shirt a little bit!). I took a sharpie and drew the Mandarin shape of the collar free hand. Don't make it too tall, as you don't want it constantly hitting your chin. I cut off about half the height of my collar.
Here you can see my markings as well as how much I cut off. Iron your new collar so that it stays up. Don't worry about the raw edge, you'll be covering that up in a moment. For the next part, you'll need about 3 yards of teal or dark blue bias tape and a similar teal or dark blue contrasting thread.
I used Sewology double-fold bias tape in Turquoise. Measure the length of your collar and cut that same length of bias tape+an extra inch. Pin to the raw edge of your new collar and top-stitch in place.
Back view. Next, add bias tape strips down either side of the button-hole side strip. The button hole strip will go on the top of the buttoned strip, so putting both strips of bias tape on this side will ensure they can both be seen. One side can wrap easily around the finished edge of the shirt. For the side that effectively goes right down the center of the fabric, I just pressed the bias tape flat and top-stitched down both sides.
I like to finish off the raw edges of my bias tape by folding it underneath itself and back stitching. You have to be particularly careful around the collar part, where it can get tricky at the edge of a tight curve.
Time to add some details! On the open side next to each bias strip, straight stitch on your largest stitch length, zig-zag stitch parallel to that, and then straight stitch once more to box it in. This is what mine looks like after all that stitching:
A closer look:
I didn't do the neatest stitching job, but it looks pretty good from far away. ;)
Join me in Part 2 where I finish off the sleeves and put the finished product with the whole costume!
