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Don’t you just hate it when you buy a shirt and it shrinks in the wash? Yea, me too. I bought this shirt a few years back and after one wash, it was definitely not wearable.

The design was so cute I couldn’t part with it, so to the back of the closet it went…until now. For this project, I really had to brainstorm. I was thinking of making a tank top by incorporating a brown shirt, but I had no idea what type of tank top I wanted. I was thinking of making a racerback tank, but realized that with such a tiny shirt, there wouldn’t be enough fabric. I needed some advice. So, I went to my fashion-savvy friend Melinda and she pulled out a bunch of different tops she had until we found one that I could use as a template.

So…to the reconstruction!

This post will be a bit more extensive explaining what I did since I just cut and sewed with a semi-formed idea of how the end product would look. I ended up incorporating 4 different shirts to make this tank top. The yellow shirt was semi-sheer so I found another too small shirt to put underneath and then expanded it using a brown tee. In short, I put brown panels on the sides and green underneath the yellow resulting in a total of four panels.

I took the yellow shirt and cut it at the sides to have two rectangles. I lined these up on the green shirt and cut out the same width panels. The yellow was a little shorter than I liked so I made the greena bit longer by a few inches.

I measured around my bust and hips [with my new measuring tape!] and subtracted the width of the yellow shirt minus an inch for seam allowance. The remaining length was divided by two–these would be the side panels. Since I wanted the bottom of the tank to be a bit wider, I made a template using newspaper. I lined this up, traced it onto the shirt and then cut!

Prior to sewing up the panels, I needed to make the straps and hook. Unfortunately, these shirts were small so I didn’t have excess fabric to make the straps. Luckily, Melinda donated an old shirt and I found an extra brown shirt! So, I cut the tee into a long continuous strip. I used the pink and brown strips and braided using four strands. The hook for the back of the tank was made with a smaller brown strip.

I placed the straps and hook where I wanted them to be placed and then sewed the yellow and green panels together.

Then I sewed the brown panels and lined them up with the yellow/green panels. Pinned and sewed!

I added a cinch in the front and voila! C’est fini…or so I thought. I tried on the tank, but the straps were so thick that the bow kind of overpowered the tank top. So, back to reconstruction. I cut the longer strap to the same length as the other and attached buttons on the back of the tank to make it cross in the back. I now had no use of the back hook, so I cut it off as close to the seam as I could.