T-shirt tutorial: gone troppo

Despite the lack of a decent summer this year, or perhaps because of it, the weather in Melbourne has been pretty darn good these past few days. Even though the doona's well and truly on the bed, it's still warm enough during the day to wear a T-shirt. Not that you'll ever see me wearing a plain old T-shirt. As you know, I have to fiddle with everything. Take this dress that I bought at Savers for $7 over a year ago.

I loved the crazy explosion of colour but the collar made it so old-lady-like. I wasted no time in its removal. In fact, I snipped it off so quick-smartly that I didn't get a "before" picture which is why the collar section and the body have a big gap between them where you can see the mannequin's cleavage!

All I did after cutting the collar section out was to fold the raw edge of the neckline under and hand-stitch it in place. Too easy.

I was going to cut the dress to mini length but decided to leave it long instead. More fabric=more surface area for colour= more impact!

If you wanted to make a mini dress similar to this you could easily cut the collar out of a big plain polo shirt, or even just cut the neckline on a big T-shirt a bit deeper, and then go crazy with fabric paints or pastels.
Due to the yukky collar placket stretching quite far down and the neckline I created being deeper than I'd like, I have to wear a singlet top underneath this dress to keep myself nice. and I also tend to pile on the jewellery to cover it up a bit.

All my accessories in this shot are the result of some crafty evenings....the turquoise earrings are my new favourites. I bought the turquoise ball-y sections at the Salvos for $2 last week, they were on small gold posts for pierced ears but I removed them and attached them to these big gold clip-ons that my sister gave me for my birthday. Jump rings and pliers - where would I be without you?