.my take on the diy ruffle-front tee.

I love finding creative, straight-forward sewing tutorials on Pinterest. I've seen the stretchy ruffle fabric in stores for a while now, and even though I've always liked it, I never knew what to do with it until I found this ruffle waterfall tee tutorial from In Honor of Design.

It's very simple in that you only need 1/4 yard of the ruffle fabric and an old shirt.

I like how the original tutorial used white-on-white, but the shirt I wanted to use is mint colored. Hancock Fabric didn't have any ruffle fabric to match, so I went with white.

So here's a few pictures to show how I pulled off my very own version of this DIY top.

I used an old J. Crew tee that is very fitted, and until I get flat abs, I'll never really be comfortable wearing it. But I knew the ruffles down the front would help mask the tightness of the shirt over my non-flat abs.

I took my 1/4 yard of white ruffle fabric, laid it down the front of my shirt, and trimmed it to the width I wanted it to be across. (I think I only had to cut about 3 ruffles off.)

 

I used a measuring tape along the edges of the ruffle fabric to the side seams of the shirt to make sure it was staying somewhat centered as I pinned the ruffles down. I left excess along the neckline and bottom hem, to be trimmed up later.

 

Making sure I had the right needle in my sewing machine (one meant for stretchy knits), I sewed along the sides, bottom, and neckline of the ruffle fabric. When sewing around the neckline, I did my best to sew right under the curvature of the tee's necking.

Let me just stress that I am not a pro at sewing two stretchy fabrics together. I had to rip out one of the side seams because the ruffle fabric had somehow gotten so off-center. For this reason, it wasn't as EASY of a project as I would've liked it to be, but if you're comfortable sewing with stretchy fabrics, you shouldn't have the same problem I had. Ripping light-colored seams off light-colored stretchy fabric is NOT FUN!!! Trust me on this one. ;-)

Once the ruffle strip was sewn down in a semi-satisfactory manner, I trimmed the excess from the neckline and bottom hem. And I was finally done!

I like the summery feel of the white on mint. I'm thinking about saving this shirt and wearing it on my 30th birthday that is coming up in a week!