I found today’s top at the Dollar a Pound Goodwill clearance center, languishing in a huge bin of castaways.

I thought the print was great, but other than that, it was pretty shapeless and blah. :/
I made a couple quick snips.

Then, I turned it around to make the button-up back into a V-neck front.

The new neck was a definite improvement. But this top needed a bit more character. I decided to rouche the sides. To do this, I sewed a straight line about 3″ up the bottom side seams. Then, I pulled on the lower thread to gather the fabric, like so:

Next, I took each sleeve and tacked them 3″ under at the top.

Now that frumpy top is looking muuuuuch better! 🙂



Cheers!
Ah nm, so Dollar a Pound bins are at specific centers. I’ll have to check to see if they have any close by but I just get the feeling there probably won’t be any in California. It’s worth checking out though…
Lovelr print and I like the ruching!
HI, I’m an aspiring refasionista myself and have been following your blog for a while. I was wondering if you could do a tutorial, or just explain how you hem your shirts into v-necks? I’ve done it a few times, but I can’t figure out what to do with the material at the point of the V, to not make it bunchy. Any advice would be greatly appreciated- thanks!
I’ll try to show a few more detailed pics of how I do it. In this case, all I had to do was fold each side down and stitch it, since it had a button-up back. I’ll be more detailed in the next one I do. 🙂