In an act of random loveliness I received a copy of Figgy’s Banyan pattern from flickr member and KCWC regular Fabricate. I love free stuff. Especially free patterns that I actually want to buy! I decided to make a couple of summer tees for Archie and went to town on my pile of to-be-re-purposed clothing. Right now I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself that both of these t-shirts are made entirely from pre-loved clothing items. Sure, there’s the eco factor, but really I get a kick out of seeing Archie walking around in stuff that frankly, in my opinion, looks pretty dang fabulous, rivals anything store bought; knowing it’s made from old shirts.
The Banyan T-shirt has lots of possibilities for personalizing. You can make it as subtle or loud as you like, whatever your boy style may be. The little pocket on the front is a nice feature and I also like that the neckline binding can be made out of the same fabric as the body of the tee, rather than ribbing. Here I’ve used a handed down spearmint t-shirt of daddy’s and a re-tired el-cheapo dress of mine, that was $5 new and really too small but I bought it anyway for obvious geometric fantasticness.
For this one I wanted to make a plain tee with a party on the pocket. The geometric fabric is from a thrifted sweater, also seen here on these pants. And the grey is another daddy shirt. My favourite thing about using old tees to make a new tees is the time you save by not hemming by lining up the pattern pieces so they sit over the already hemmed parts of the tee. I did this with both the sleeves and the hem on both tees and so they took under an hour each. I have plans to a whole heap more, they’re just so fun!
I thought I’d play around with a little feature at the bottom in an attempt at a high low hem. I think its pretty cute and any sort of top stitching really adds to a plain shirt like this. 
