If you have been on Pinterest, I’m sure you’ve seen a pin about turning a t-shirt into a cute workout tank top (like this). I’ve seen it a ton of times, and have been looking for a good excuse to try it.
I was going to do it with my race shirt I got for the Hollywood Half 5K, but that ended up being a nice technical shirt, so I didn’t want to cut it up.
But next Saturday, I have the Revlon Run/Walk and I knew that the shirt would be a cotton one and perfect for trying this pin out.
I picked up my shirt after my work shift this past Saturday.
No lines when I got there, so I was in and out!
As soon as I got home, I grabbed a couple of old junky shirts and tried out the tank top instructions. My first shirt was a disaster, but the second and third one came out ok (the shirts were a bit small for me, so I don’t have pictures of them).
After testing it out, I decided I was ready to do my race shirt.
I put the shirt out on my bed.
I cut off the collar.
I cut off the first sleeve.
I took the cut off sleeve and used it as a pattern for the other sleeve (so they’d be even).
(it was way more even than the picture looks)
Next, I flipped the shirt around so the bottom was toward me and cut off the bottom hem.
I don’t have a picture of this next part, but I cut the stitching away from the bottom hem that I cut off (so all I had left was a strip of shirt with no thread). Then I stretched it out to make a long shirt string.
Next, I flipped the shirt over so I could cut a v shape out of the back.
Then I wrapped the shirt string around the v in the back to make it a racer back top.
So far so good, right? Wrong.
I try on the shirt and it looks like this.
The sides were cut away too much and the back was cut way too low. I couldn’t figure out how I made such a mistake!
Finally, I realized it. All the shirts I used before fit me snuggly. So when I cut the sleeves off to make the arm holes, I followed the stitching on the sleeves. But since this shirt was big on me (I probably should have gotten it a size smaller), the sleeves were big and cutting around the stitching made the holes way too big.
I could still get away with wearing this shirt with a tank top underneath, but I don’t like how the back fits at all. Maybe I could sew it a bit so it doesn’t hang so low.
But I’m probably not going to wear this shirt to the event now. In the past, I always wore my race shirt on race day, but lately, I’ve been having a bit more fun with my race outfits.
I might wear the Superman shirt I wore for my last 5K, or maybe just a pink tank top. But after this crafting fail, I really don’t want to have to wear this shirt and have people who don’t read this blog see how badly I did!
