Yes You Can Costumes

Making the Extraordinary from the Ordinary

Upcycle a Shirt into a Costume Vest

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Need a simple costume vest in a jiffy? Look no further than that old, button-down shirt at the back of your child’s closet! Is it the wrong color? Dunk it in some RIT dye, like I did for Elliott and Oliver’s Kelly Green leprechaun vests. So, let’s upcycle some shirts into costume vests!

The beauty of converting a shirt into a vest is that you don’t need to add buttons, or really much of anything else! You mainly just remove elements that you don’t need. 

Supplies

Fitting

First, I nabbed my little leprechaun for a fitting. I determined which buttons I would keep as the top and bottom ones of the vest. I pinned the hem and spread the collar. The fold line of the opened collar would be the future line on which I would cut to begin to remove the collar. I also marked where I wanted the shoulders to land. You can see me gauging whether or not to take the side seams in. I ultimately decided not to, but you could to achieve a trimmer fit.

DIY Easy Vest

Pinning/Sleeve Removal

Next, I folded the shirt perfectly in half on my work surface. I matched the armscye seams with pins, and then marked the new shoulder grade down to the armpit with more pins.

The pins holding everything in place allowed me to cut through both sleeves at once to achieve the (basically) exact, mirror-image armhole shape on each side.

Now, to alter the collar! I removed the safety pins and marked the grade of the new vest neckline from the shoulder to the button placket with quilting pins.

Collar Removal

Next, I used a ruler to guide the straight cut I made from the shoulder to the center front.

Here, you can see the cut-open collar. See? It’s starting to look like a vest!

It’s a bit awkward to cut through all the layers, like the button placket. However, covering the newly cut neckline in bias tape soon fixes that problem. It is very satisfying to encase all the internal weirdness with a cohesive strip of material!

Next, I finished removing the collar entirely with just a few scissor snips along the collar band. I saved the collar, along with the sleeves, to make matching, Irish princess accessories for the girls!

Bias Tape

Regretfully, I was in such a hurry to finish the vests, (when am I not, though) that I don’t have pictures of me sewing on the double-fold bias tape around the neckline. However, it is pretty intuitive, and there are lots of great YouTube videos that can show you how, like this one!

Hem

The above series of photos showed how I quickly tacked up the hem of the shirt with a few back and forth stitches in strategic areas. Then, I ran over the hem with an iron to make a crisp, finished look. (Did I mention that I was in a hurry?) Below, I show more hem and bias tape details. By far the trickiest part of handling bias tape is how to tuck and fold the ends to created a clean, mitered edge.

Armholes

I finished the armholes of the vest by serging around them and then folding that edge inward and stitching around it one time. The result was rather puckered armholes This is probably mostly because it is difficult to hem a curved edge. Encasing the armholes in bias tape would have produced a cleaner, more polished look, but, c’est la vie! Fortunately, this shortcoming isn’t as noticeable when the vests are worn.

DIY Upcycle Shirt to Vest

And, there you have it, folks: Yes You Can make cute vests from button-down shirts!

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DIY Irish Princess Crowns and Necklaces

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This St. Patrick’s Day costume project really took on a life of its own! I started with the idea of converting shirts into vests for the boys, and before I knew it, I realized I could use all the leftover bits to make matching accessories for our girls. In this post, I’ll show you how I used the leftover collars to make choker necklaces and crown headdresses for Emma, Eliza, and Annika! So, first, you can see the dyed shirts and what they looked like after I whacked off their sleeves and collars.

Then, I started to unpick the stitching that held the collar bands to the shirts, and then separating the collars from the collar bands.

Once the two pieces of each collar were separated, I pinned around each collar band. Then, I top-stitched completely around them to form the choker necklaces. Next, I cut elongated triangle shapes form the collars to form the tiaras and stitched around the raw edges.

At this point, I realized I was out of gold puff paint. JoAnn Fabric and Craft is on Jeff’s way home from work, so I asked him to pick up a bottle for me. He texted me this picture. Apparently, there are TONS of options! I chose the bottle second from the right. I wanted the gold designs to be metallic, but not glittery.

A quick, Google Image search produced lots of great, Celtic knot designs. In the past, I probably would have tried to painstakingly trace the designs onto my crown and necklace pieces. These days, desperation for time makes me brave (or reckless). I just looked at these designs and free-handed the paint. Not bad! However, I did realize I forgot a bit of the design at the bottom and fixed it, later. Do you see what I missed?

For extra Celtic bling, I added some adhesive “emeralds”. They were from the same Rainbow Gemstone Sheet I purchased at Walmart, for our Valentine’s Day DIY Prince Costumes. However, I learned my lesson from last time and stuck the jewels on with a blob of paint and surrounded each with a ring of the same.

Now, all I needed to do was attach each tiara crown shape to a headband or comb. So, I hot-glued Emma and Eliza’s to green, fabric-covered plastic Dollar Tree headbands that we already had.

I hot-glued Annika’s to a mini comb.

Ta-da! They turned out pretty!

Now to finish the choker necklaces! I buttoned them to find their front centers and marked the spots with pins. After studying some Celtic knot design images, I came up with a simple design that I liked: interlocking circles, ovals, and diamonds.

I had a lot of fun applying the puff paint! It was such a simple and relatively quick way to create a rich, jewelry look. I finished the designs with more “emeralds”.

Then, I left them to dry, overnight.

Look at that! I think these turned out really lovely, if I say so, myself. It was cool to see that the fabric dye I used for the shirts even dyed the buttons!

But, what about Annika? I only had two collar bands. What was her necklace made from? Fortunately, the Dollar Tree has a great ribbon selection in its floral and craft section! I selected the green ribbon, second from the left: Bright Grosgrain Ribbon, 5-yd. Spools. I cut a length of ribbon, leaving enough to tie it in a bow around Annika’s neck. Then, I applied the same design with paint and gems that I did for Emma and Eliza’s.

And, here’s the trio of choker necklaces!

Here are closeups of each crown and necklace in action. Emma:

Eliza (hers is harder to see, due to her blouse collar):

Annika.

So, there you go! All you need is puff paint, jewels, and a few scraps of ribbon and material, and you can make some lovely princess jewelry!

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DIY Dyed Green Leprechaun Costumes

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No green clothes? No problem! You can DIY your very own dyed, green Leprechaun costumes for St. Patrick’s Day! RIT Dye is a fun and easy fix for this, and many costume woes.

Now, I normally do all my dyeing in the washing machine. However, the boys’ shirts I was dyeing were 55% cotton, 45% polyester. Synthetic materials don’t “take” dye as well, so I thought the added heat and constant stirring required for stove-top dyeing would produce more vibrant and permanent color.

Supplies

  • Clothing/fabric to dye. Wettened thoroughly
  • Pot for dyeing (do not use for cooking)
  • Rit dye
  • Salt
  • Tongs (do not use for cooking)
  • Large plastic container (do not use for food storage, afterward)

Instructions

  • Salt

I mixed one cup into the water and heated it to nearly boiling.

  • Dye

Then, I poured the entire bottle of green dye into the pot.

  • Clothing

Now, what exactly was I dyeing? Well, I had two dress shirts that I wanted to turn into vests for the boys to wear. I also had a darling, white top for Annika. They just needed to be green! Here’s Oliver’s shirt:

Here’s Elliott’s shirt. I was really lucky to find two shirt with the same fiber content! This would help them to turn out in an identical shade of green.

And here is Annika’s shirt. It was so sweet that I almost didn’t want to dye it!

  • Soak

However, once the water looked hot enough and the dye was mixed in, I gave these three garments a serious soaking in water before adding them to the dye pot!

  • Stir

The stove top dyeing directions advise you to constantly stir the fabric for 45 – 60 minutes. This is to ensure an even dye job, since the material likes to float to the surface. This hour-long interval gave the kids plenty of time to notice that I was doing something weird in the kitchen. I told them I was making “Leprechaun Soup”. Afterward, I realized that it looked like I was actually cooking Leprechauns, clothes and all. Oops! Poor kids. I hope I didn’t scar them for life!

  • Rinse

After an hour, I carefully dumped the super hot dye water onto a bed of pebbles in our backyard. (I didn’t want to stain our white, enamel, kitchen sink!) Then, I used the tongs to pick up the scalding hot clothes and put them in the plastic salad container for transport to the washing machine. I ran them through the rinse and drain cycle to remove excess dye. Then, I washed them in a normal cycle with cold water and vinegar to help set the color. As you can see, they turned out a lovely, vivid green!

Here are the dyed clothes in action! Follow the links, below, to see how I repurposed just about every scrap of the boys’ shirts into their vests and accessories for the girls.

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