Love, Neffie: T-Time: Sassy Crop Top

So, yesterday, my A'cappella group (UCSC's Cloud 9) held auditions for 85+ people. On behalf of my A'cappella group, thank you to all who came out and auditioned!

Anyways, I didn't really do any DIY project or anything last week, but then I remembered that I did some T-shirt modification with my Cloud 9 shirt (much to some of my fellow Cloudies dismay since it is no longer a "super matchy" t-shirt, but I think it looks much better like this than as the moo-moo dress it flattered me with all last year) around mid-summer and never posted that because I kinda forgot about it...
But! I have it here for you now! And how appropriate that I post this the day after auditions? Woo!

Sassy Crop Top

Need:

Scissors

Larger T-shirt

measuring instrument

ribbon or t-shirt scrap from this project.

Your brain

T-Timing:

Gather your large shirt

I promise I have short on under this.

Cut a 2-3 inch wide circle from your neckband. This will help the shirt really drape off your shoulders and allow you to be the sassy beast you've always known you can be. Then cut off about 1.5-2 inches above the hem on your sleeves.

I always use chalk or a pen to measure and draw what to cut for accuracy purposes.

Your shirt should look like this afterwards:

I know the back is crooked, I fixed it later.

Determine how much you want cut off the bottom to make it a crop top. I'm on the shorter side and ended up cutting off 5-6 inches of t-shirt from the bottom to achieve a crop top.

Mmm...fabric scraps.

Now the fun part. Take a look at your sleeves. Measure how much fabric you can take out of the width of them, subtract a 1/2 inch and cut that out.

If this is confusing you, I could deal with 3 inches less of the width of my sleeve. So, I determined the center line of my sleeve from the neck to the bottom hem (or, where it used to be) and cut a 2.5 inch wide piece of fabric out from my sleeve. Now you have a "sleeve" that's cut in half and needs to be "stitched" back together.

Cut fabric out of the sleeve. Woot.

Next, make 7 pairs of holes equally spaced apart and about a 1/2 inch in from the side of the vertical cut on your sleeve. Using some ribbon or t-shirt scraps, begin lacing up your sleeve like a tennis shoe from top to bottom of sleeve.

Holes!

I had originally used an old neck band from a white shirt as my string, but it didn't hold up (rookie mistake) and I ended up just using scrap fabric from the bottom of my shirt I had cut off earlier.

Blasted white fraying fabric.

That's it! I recommend wearing this with at least a bandeau top (bet you could make your own matching one with your scrap fabric. Here's how .) or a well fitting bra. I decided to go with a tank because I felt a little too scandalous with just a bra or a bandeau, but don't let my fear of scandalousity stop you!