Make a small shirt bigger

Have shirts that no longer fit? Don't throw/give them away just yet. This idea for making small shirts fit again may just work for you.

I have a black "under" shirt that shrunk, and even thought it was bought to wear under things, it wasn't even comfortable enough to do that, since breathing and moving one's arms are important.

I got the idea to add side panels to the shirt by googling something like "how to make a small shirt bigger" or "how to fix a shirt that shrunk"....and found someone's response on Craftster.org.

Since it was as simple as adding a piece of fabric to each side, I decided I would give her idea a try.

This is how it started:

I cut up another black t-shirt to add as the panel. I guessed on how much width to add - I think it may have been 3-4 inches per side including seam allowance. It depends on how much wider you want it.

Next, I sliced open the shirt (sounds much more gorey than it was)

I took the shirt off the dress form, turned it inside out and pinned and sewed the panel pieces to each side.

Here's the shirt sewn together, still inside out so you can see how the panels fit

Here's the completed shirt (sorry the black is hard to see) but you can tell how much looser it hangs on the dress form.

It worked perfectly. Now my shrunken undershirt fits. And it doesn't matter that the blacks are slightly off because it's never worn on the outside.

The woman on Craftster recommend adding panels of contrasting fabric to each side. Just a thought.

Your favorite shirts may not be headed to the thrift store after all!

*See my 2nd tutorial on making a small white shirt bigger

Linked to: