Vintage Crafts- Retro Style Upcycled Men’s Shirt

Hey guys! I have really been enjoying making and sharing vintage crafts with you all every month from my collection of vintage home magazines! This week I am going to share with you how to update an oversized men’s button up with some retro flair. I really wanted to share this one with you all including the source, but for the life of me I can’t seem to find the exact magazine that I got the idea from. The original was a in a mag and it was a gift idea for a teen girl. They took a man’s shirt and rolled the sleeves. Then they cut and hemmed it to be shorter and embroidered a cross stitch design on it. If anyone knows the specific idea and mag it came from, please feel free to share!

For now though, I am going to tell you how I made my retro top. I started with a large men’s button up shirt I picked up at Goodwill. I tried it on and measured where I wanted it to hit length wise. Then I added a little to to the length for hemming and cut it at that length. I measured up from the bottom of each side seam and then drew a straight line across. Then I turned it under by a quarter inch and then under by about an inch again and stitched the hem closed on my machine. Then I stitched a little crochet trim to the under side of the hem. I cut the sleeves off at a little above my elbow line. Then I rolled the sleeve up twice and top stitched around the edge. Then I rolled it up again a couple of times. I hand stitched a little crochet trim on the pocket of the shirt, and then I drew my initial with a marking pen and using a back stitch, hand embroidered the initial in a navy thread to coordinate with my shirt.

I love how my top turned out! I made it in about an hour with all the hand stitching, so it was pretty quick to whip up. The shirt only cost me a couple of dollars and the trim was a couple of dollars, so this shirt only cost me around five dollars to make. You can’t beat that, really! I love the retro flair it has! It is super comfortable too! I hope you all will give this one a try sometime! It is a great project for a beginner too I think! I’ll be back soon with another fun DIY. Until then…

Happy Crafting!