Altered T's

Zips has bestowed upon me a task to spruce up some t-shirts with spiffy vintage iron-on decals for the new academic year. Namely to turn throat-clutching crew necks into more shapely v-necks. Given this daunting undertaking, and my own marginal sewing skills, I thought it really necessary to figure out how. SO, to practice:

I've got this unglamorous, boxy speed racer t-shirt that I bought on a whim in the men's graphic t-shirt section at a target some years ago (before that appalling live-action movie). I wore it a couple of times, but mostly relegated it to sleepwear because I was always swimming in it, although the ringer neck always choked me no matter how much I tried to stretch it. SO, I found a couple of lovely specific tutorials on altering tees (hilarious, short video) and converting them to v-neck (scroll down a little, lots of photos). I have a couple of american apparel tees whose fit I love, so I traced the cut onto the big tee with a sharpie and went at it with a pair of scissors, lugged out my handy dandy Singer, and VOILA!

I'm not sure the v is quite centered, but at least I'll be able to wear it out of the house without being mistaken for a 9 year old boy! It didn't take long either. I'm going to go rummaging for more oversized tees that I can fix up. In the meantime, Zips is well pleased. I'm going to need a couple more practice tees to build up my confidence before I lay hands on one of her Fleetwood Mac and Purple Rain t-shirts!