Upcycled T-shirt from an old Moby Wrap

Holiday weekend boredom got the best of me today.

Around three o’clock I just couldn’t ignore that urge to create something new.  But with a napping baby and no backup at home. I was limited to what I could find at home.  After searching my craft closet for inspiration to no avail I remembered a post I saw on Pinterest for a simple t-shirt design that had intrigued me.

The simple cut of the picture looked exactly like a DownEast Basics Essential T-shirt – a huge staple in my wardrobe.  I think I have one in every color they make.  The sad thing is, I shell out $20 a shirt and they don’t last all that long (thanks to being a mom with three boys! Hazard of the job) so I thought maybe I could make my own!  Only problem was that I didn’t have any fabric on-hand that would provide that stretchy feel of the shirt.

But wait.   I did.   In my youngest son’s closet, I dug out several old Moby Wraps.  These wraps were absolute godsends when the boys were little.  But with the little guy closing in on three years old, I don’t use them very often and I figured, I could spare one of them, right?

It was a good call.  The fabric was perfect.  Stretchy and precisely the width that I needed for this project.

Making the pattern

To make the pattern, I used a page of the local newspaper and one of my DownEast t-shirts to create the pattern.  I folded it half and mirror cut it on the fold in the newspaper to ensure that both sides would be the same.  I had to tape a second piece of newspaper to the bottom to get it long enough for the whole shirt.  I made two patterns, one with a higher rise for the back and one with a lower rise for the front.

Cutting out the fabric

Just like a regular pattern, I pinned each pattern piece to the Moby Wrap and cut each one out.  There was actually enough fabric left in the wrap that I could probably make one, possibly two more shirts out of it!

Sewing the shirt

Since there wasn’t really a back or front to the Moby Wrap fabric, I just pinned the two pieces together at the shoulders and along the sides.   I sewed the shoulders first and then I sewed the sides.   I then hemmed the neck and arms with a small 1/4 inch hem.  The bottom has a 1/2 inch hem.

And that is it!  It was every bit as easy as I thought it was going to be.  It took me about an hour to put it all together from creating the pattern to sewing the final hem.  That also includes lugging my sewing machine out of the craft closet and downstairs to do the actual sewing.

The fit is exactly the same as the DownEast shirts and cost me nothing!  Gotta love upcycling.  I would love to see how this works with my patterned Moby Wraps, but I’m not quite ready to give them up yet.  That would mean admitting the baby days are officially over in our family and I’m not ready to do that yet (even though I know they are).