June 27, 2018

Heart Shirt DIY

This heart shirt is probably the most ambitious DIY we have ever attempted. It is the final result of all kinds of ideas and influences coming together. Let’s start at the beginning. When we were in our little local fabric store Naomi found this super cute sheer heart fabric. We stood around like loitering teens just admiring it. The staff may have been concerned about our intentions. But it was just so cute we couldn’t walk away.

Here’s where the story unfolds Naomi had seen that the fabulous Helen Anderson wore a Top Shop heart shirt, made with similar fabric, on Valentines Day. I was definitely imagining a time (Maybe when I was 80) when I could maybe make something out of this pretty AF fabric. Thankfully Naomi suggested we should each just buy some of this fabric since it was hella on sale, and figure out what to do with it later. We could finally stop loitering around and just buy the dang fabric. We had our fabric and the inspiration to make a heart shirt. What we really needed now was some guidance. Just so much guidance.

One of the things I love about our friendship is how often we will come across the same things and send them to each other. There is a lot of saying “I was just going to show you that!” in our lives. It’s great. Lucky us we both came across this fantastic DIY by Annika Victoria

Lightbulb moment! If you’re at all like us and want to get more into sewing but aren’t really sure where to start just watch ALL her videos. Helpful for sure and also she is super lovely and hilarious. Do yourself a favour it’s good feelings all around. Especially if you are, like me, a visual learner. It was time for a bold move. As we sometimes do, Naomi and I got together to hang out, drink coffee, and of course try and craft. Today’s project: ambitious AF cute AF sheer heart shirt!

We had all our pieces but it was time to put them all together. Eeek. Thankful for friends and especially mine. If I was on my own there is no way I would ever attempt this heart shirt DIY. I’m not the most patient person when it comes to pinning and cutting. As you can imagine this causes some problems with skills like sewing. But I had the best company and we went forth and gave it a go.

Pick out shirts that are the same shape and fit you want the heart shirt to be. Fold your shirt in half and lay over either pattern paper or fancy newspaper you pulled out the recycling. We used the double pencil technique Annika suggested to get our seam allowance while we traced out the shirt.

After cutting out our first pattern on newspaper we found this tracing paper that was durable and worked perfectly for patterns. We were hoping this DIY wouldn’t end in tears and would be something we’d use again and again. This in mind we retraced our pattern onto the sturdier tracing paper. We gave the pattern more of a drop shoulder like Annika did, and then followed her instructions to make a sleeve pattern piece. Of course, we forgot to take pictures of these steps. Whoops, but also what else is new.

Here is a blurry pic of me killing myself laughing after returning our first patterns to the recycling bin. Cause we remembered to take this picture.

Now that we had the pattern pieces ready to go it was time to cut fabric, once we got this little cat out of the way. This part took awhile cause she is so dang cute.

Place your pattern pieces on the fold and cut out two pieces for a front and a back. This was pretty much the last picture we took of the process. We got to this giggly ‘not really sure what we were doing’ mood and the picture taking was forgotten about. There were two things we did with our shirts that differed from the tutorial. For one to keep our fabric from fraying we used a zigzag stitch for everything. Also, the sleeves really scared us and we weren’t confident the technique Annika used would work for the sheer fabric we were using. Instead, we pinned the sleeve evenly on at the top and bottom and made little pleats to get the two pieces to fit together. There were some choice words spoken (yelled, by me) but we got there!

Look at this Queen! We did it! There was quite a long time staring at ourselves in the mirror. No shame, just two happy girls. A lot of shocked faces followed by a lot of smiles. Will be using this pattern again! Tracing the pattern out onto sturdy paper was worth it! I’m excited for us to wear these heart shirts out! (probably not at the same time, but we’re not ruling it out) I feel like I say this a lot but if we can do this project with super difficult fabric anyone can do it! I’m feeling really encouraged and inspired to go for it and just try the projects I want to do. Not be held back thinking it just won’t work. This was a big win for us.