DIY: Fitted T-Shirt

What I made:

 
Last Thanksgiving I found myself in the wonderful city of London. After two trains, a plane ride, an two hour search for a friend, my friend and I made our way to our hostel. We walked into the 100 degree heat, dark dorm style room. Even though it was only around 10 pm at least half the beds were full of presumably sleeping people, which makes it hard to find your bed and settle your stuff. It was then I realized I had not packed any pjs-- and sleeping in the same room as ten other people meant I really did need pjs. The next day we headed to a huge, packed department store where I tried to find something cheap to sleep in.

Et, volia!

The only issue was that once I got back to France and didn't need to sleep in the shirt I realized just how shapeless the thing was. While acceptable when I'm using it to sleep in, I wanted to make it more practical. My recent foray into tailoring gave me the idea to just pin and sew the shirt to make it be more flattering. My inspiration was this tutorial, which I had planned on sewing sometime.

Inspiration!

Reality!

Sorry for the crappy quality pictures! This was a quick (well, more on that soon) DIY and I just shot some quick photos with my phone.

Anyway! To make the shirt more flattering, I put a fitted t-shirt on top of it, and pinned where I wanted to sew.

This was actually pin attempt 1 of 3! The first time I pinned my shirt I realized that it wasn't symmetrical. So, I took out my pins, adjusted my fitted shirt, and pinned again. Then, I realized that if I wanted to try on the stretchy shirt with the new pins then I really needed to pin with safety pins. So, I pulled out all my straight pins and re-pinned with safety pins.

Two Things to Remember:

• Pin the shirt right side in-- basically do NOT turn this shirt inside out, as one normally would when tailoring a shirt. I made this mistake and had to take out both of my seams and re-sew the shirt right side in. 
• Pin the shirt with safety pins and they won't fall out when you're trying your outfit on.

Other than that, it's pretty straightforward! I pinned it almost to the armpits of the fitted shirts and sewed.

Final Result:

I loved the result. It's not a huge change but it does make my large shirt more flattering. And, if I had had better luck pinning/sewing, this DIY would have taken less than 30 min! 

Thanks for reading! :)

Leaving/Arriving Home

Yesterday I packed up and left my little room in the French house which I had grown to love despite the fact that I was a stone throws away from a very active railroad line and a crossroads where people loved to rev their engines at three am in the morning.

I've discovered a disturbing trend to dislike where ever I'm living-- I disliked Couch, my dorm sophomore year ((and believe me, I had great reason to dislike Couch: gagging smells permeated every hallway, mold was ever prevalent, I lived with two lovely girls in a room barely big enough for one person, and I had a third roommate with an infestation of ants)). I disliked my 'room' ((which I not so affectionately nicknamed my cell)) in the dorm in France. Once again I believe I had great reasons to dislike it-- the room was just big enough to take five steps, a board would have literally been more comfortable than my bed, and at one point I found myself wearing every coat and sweater I could fit in, boiling water in a cup just to hold in my hands because the French people didn't believe in central heating even when it was literally freezing outside.

Even though I believe I'm justified in my dislike, I consider myself a laid back person and I didn't like this troubling trend of complaining about everywhere I live. So I was quite happy to love living in the French house this semester. Sure there was the odd terrifying flying bug that made it into my room but there were also crazy comfortable couches in the living room, endless hot water in the private bathroom ((a rarity in college)), a...workable kitchen, and a budget to cook weekly meals.

As a college student I live a semi-nomadic life. Every couple of months I've been packing up and moving-- sometimes to a different country, sometimes to a different town. Now, I'm back 'home'-- rapidly becoming a relative word. I drove home yesterday for summer in 55 degree weather with driving rain. Someone needs to tell the weather it is supposed to be summer. This is Arkansas-- normally this time of year I would be dreaming of a cool breeze, or anything that wasn't suffocating humidity.

I really do love my backyard. I can sit on my couch, look out the window, and only see trees; no neighbors, just branches overlaying branches.

My backyard also is great fodder for mother's day cards ((I took this picture a year ago!)).

While I am pumped that finals are finally over, I was sad to leave Hendrix and all my friends for the summer. There are perks, of course, with summer-- I can't wait to start sewing and crafting. I have plenty ideas in mind so be sure to check back to see if I fail miserably or if I create beautiful works of art (ha!).

Thanks for reading! :)

On Easter and Bubbles

The title would make more sense if I had written this post when I wanted to write it-- during Easter weekend.

However, my Methodist school doesn't even give us Good Friday off; various things kept me late in Conway, so my Easter weekend didn't contain copious amounts of free time.

Regardless!

Photographing nature has made me more observant. It's interesting, to me at least, to compare when things bloom and how that changes year to year. For example, this year, our spring is ridiculously late-- when I woke up this morning it was in the 40s. Following that, everything has been blooming later. Luckily there were some things in bloom when I was home.

I didn't take any photos that I really loved-- and not only is that due to lack of time, but also I'm out of practice. I haven't taken many photos recently, basically none, due to being crazy busy. Hopefully this summer I can remedy that.

Easter morning I had breakfast at my church and then a beautiful service followed by a huge potluck. Then, I drove and stayed with some relatives for Easter dinner-- even for me, that's a lot of good food for one day.

I had a fun time photographing my little cousins playing with their new bubble contraptions.

In other new, finals are rapidly approaching! I have one day left of classes-- Monday-- and then my first two finals are on Thursday. Electrodynamics is going to be rough, but Classical Mythology shouldn't be too bad. Then I have my French final the next Tuesday and volia! the semester is over!

Which is crazy; I feel like I just got back to Hendrix, not like my junior year of college is basically over. Because that means I'll be a senior. Which is just not okay because being a senior is one step closer to graduating, leaving Hendrix and all my friends-- which I'm not ready to do yet.

Thanks for reading!