Yesterday I took the sleeves off this shirt to make it a summer shirt. It's 100% cotton. I had bought it at Goodwill and decided to make it sleeveless for summer. The other shirt I did this to took me two days and a lot of work. I was beginning to think that making a shirt from scratch would have been easier. I spent some time thinking about how to go about it before tackling this shirt. I knew there had to be an easier method than ripping the whole sleeve out and then either trying to hem it on the bias or using binding. I decided since I paid so little for the shirt I would try another method and see if it worked. I cut the sleeve off, but left 1 inch of material from the former sleeve attached. The I folded that material under once to cover the raw edges and again to make it even with the shoulder seam already on the shirt. I pinned it and then stitched it down using the seam already on the shirt as a guide. Since it was 100% cotton and lightweight already there wasn't a lot of bulk to the seam. It came out nice! It took maybe 1/2 hour to complete. I was happy with that method. I don't know if you can tell by the photo, but the shirt has a collar and buttons down the front. I would like to find some thin cotton, very thin and make some shirts for summer with long sleeves for myself. This one was for Captain Kitty. She always seems to be hot and wants sleeveless, but we have to find something decent for her to wear that doesn't show everything. Most of sleeveless shirts we have around here in the store are either too dressy (silky or some other unsuitable fabric) or too low cut for our standards. I would prefer something to cover up my arms from bugs and sun burn. As I was thinking about this project I was thinking that a really thin breathable cotton would be nice to try.

Sew Long for Now!