men's shirt to tank refashion

Hi guys! I hope you all had a fantastic 4th of July weekend! You may remember last Monday I (Jessica) posted about my unintentionally patriotic outfit:

To make my DIY tank top for that post, I took a men's Aeropostal button down shirt and refashioned it into a top of my own design! Today I'm going to show you how I did it, with a variation on our basic tank sewing tutorial.

I started with this shirt:

I got this shirt for $0.25, and it had a giant rip in one sleeve, so I knew I'd be turning it into something else.

You'll need:
1 mens button down shirt, preferably in a L or XL size. This one was a M and there was barely enough fabric!
1 case of single fold bias tape in a complimentary color
a tank top pattern.

1. I started by laying out the pattern I made in our basic tank top tutorial. If you don't have a pattern already, our tutorial will show you how to make your own pattern from a tank that fits your perfectly already!
2. I used the pattern back piece and positioned it across the front of the shirt, pinning it down. I tried to get the buttons as close to the center as possible, and I used the original hem of the shirt!
3. Cut out around your pattern piece.
4. Make sure when you cut out your pieces they're as even as possible!

5. Fold your pieces over across each other to make sure they're even. Trim any uneven bits.
6. You should now have two pieces, a front and a back!
7. I wanted my front piece to be lower then the back, to I pinned my front pattern piece over my fabric.
8. I cut out a new, lower neckline from just the front piece of fabric.

9. Now that I had two piece, front and back, that were exactly the way I wanted them, I could actually start sewing!
10. With right sides together, pin your pieces together at the sides.
11. And also at the shoulders.
12. Sew both sides and shoulders with a straight stitch, and run a zig zag stitch along the outside to keep it from fraying (or trim with pinking shears!)

13. Now it's time to use bias tape to face your arm holes and neckline. This is a pretty confusing process, but I'll attempt to do my best to explain it!
14. First, you'll pin bias tape around the outside of your neckline and arm holes, pinning your bias tape to the right side of the fabric.
15. Next, sew your bias tape down along the outside using a straight stitch.
16. Now you'll have something that looks like the picture above, with bias tape sewn down on the very outside edge of the right side of your fabric. Confused yet?

17. Now you're going to fold your bias tape over onto the wrong side of the fabric, folding the edge under.
18. Pin it all down, really really well!
19. Sew your bias tape down on the wrong side (inside of your garment). This will leave your with nice clean hems on the outside, like pictured above.
20. Iron your bias tape down, and you're done!

Hope you enjoyed our tutorial! If you make one of your own please send us a picture. we always love to see your creative works. Bonus points if you can find that exact same Aeropostal shirt to refashion!