Peasant Tops From Men’s T-Shirts

The other day I was in ShopKo and saw a super cute peasant shirt, which I did not buy because I am excruciatingly cheap and it was $11.00. Abe Lincoln is in pain, I am pinching him so hard. To ease my thrifty soul, I decided to sew peasant tops from men’s t-shirts.

Pinterest to the rescue, amiright? I did not come up with this tutorial, I actually found it on the cute blog ‘My Gramma Said.‘

How awesome is it that you can go from this:

to this:

in about an hour; and then to this:

The only changes I made to the tutorial were subbing ribbon in for the elastic, and not using the armband casings.

I don’t do white clothes because I’m clumsy they stain too easily, so I threw each one into a dye bath after I finished sewing it.

I used 2 bottles of liquid Rit dye – one blue and one yellow. I used the yellow and blue to make green. The blue shirt took the longest to dye at a full 30 minutes. The green I was satisfied with in 20, and I kid you not, the yellow took 5 minutes. It was becoming a rather virulent shade of yellow, and I was afraid to let it soak any longer for fear of looking like an egg yolk.

The 3-pack of men’s tees I bought was a bit over $7, and when you include the dye, thread, and ribbon each finished top probably cost around $3.25. Not bad!