Yes You Can Costumes

Making the Extraordinary from the Ordinary

Upcycle a Shirt into a Costume Vest

*Purchasing through my affiliate links earns me a small commission to keep creating!*

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!

More St. Patrick’s Day Content

 

DIY Dyed Green Leprechaun Costumes

*Purchasing through my affiliate links earns me a small commission to keep creating!*

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.

More St. Patrick’s Day Content

DIY Saint Lucia Lussekatter Rolls

If your kids are like mine, it’s all about the treats! We had so much fun making these sweet Lussekatter (Lucia Rolls). It was basically a sensory romp for them; like playing with Play-Doh…Only they could eat their creations, afterward! What’s not to love?

Our Lussekatter were made following the recipe in Lucia Morning in Sweden. This delightfully illustrated book gave our kids a great intro into how Saint Lucia is currently celebrated in Sweden. *Disclaimer* I am an Amazon Services LLC Associates Program member. Any purchases made through my Amazon links will earn me a small commission. I am careful to only promote products that I personally use and love!

Cracking eggs is always an adventure with these two!

I followed the recipe to the letter except for one ingredient: The saffron. It was $25 a bottle at our grocery store. In fact, saffron is the most expensive spice in the world. It is more costly, per ounce, than gold! Forking out that kind of dough for our first attempt at this dough seemed like risky business!

What did I use in lieu of saffron to give the rolls their signature, golden color? Six drops of yellow food coloring! Yes, this was a major cheat. Our rolls were also missing the flavor of saffron, as a result. Maybe we’ll go for the real thing, next year, since our kids liked the rolls.

Things took a dramatic turn when Elliott struggled to scoop enough flour.

Rolling the dough was Emma and Elliott’s favorite part of making the Lussekatter.

Lussekatter basically translates as “Lucia’s Cats”, due to the curling shape of the rolls. They resemble curling cat tails. We brushed the rolls with an egg and water mixture and placed a raisin in the heart of each curl.

Ta-da! Emma and Elliott could hardly wait to try their creations. They were so excited to share these rolls with their Nana and Papa, their siblings, and their teachers. And, that’s part of what the celebration of Saint Lucia is about. It’s about service and bringing light and physical comfort to those around us. That includes treats!

On the left: Snooty Saint Lucia. “No Lussekatter for you!”

On the right: Sweet Saint Lucia. “Saint Lucia comes to bring you breakfast!”

 

 

 

Connect