T-shirt Refashion: How To Make Your Kiddo's Clothes Fit Longer

Hi!

As you already know, children tend to grow like weeds; sprouting up literally overnight sometimes.

My Ellie May has been going through a growth spurt lately, and all of a sudden a few of her t-shirts were looking a little short.

She is going to be 3 in November, but already she is starting to grow out of her 3T shirts!!!
Seriously. She needs to slow down.
Ah, I guess she can't help it with a tall daddy (6'4") and tall momma (5'9").

Her sweet belly was starting to almost pop out from under the hem to say hello and while it may be cute, that wasn't really a look I'd like her to have.
 Modesty was at stake!

SO.

I decided to go to the store and buy her all new shirts.

Nope.

Just kidding!

Why buy more when I can just modify the ones she already has??

We have a ton of 4T shirts in the attic, waiting for her to grow into them (ahem..) but unfortunately, they're all long sleeved, for fall and winter.
I decided to just lengthen a couple of her existing t-shirts so that by the time she grows out of them, maybe it will be cold enough to wear the larger long sleeved ones. (hopefully.) :)
This is what I started with:

It was really pretty simple.
I took some knit fabric I had left over from my Pleated T-Shirt Pillow that I made last spring and cut a strip about 4"wide and 25" long.

 I had measured the width of her shirt and it was 12", so I doubled that length plus added an inch for seam allowance.

Side Note: When you're sewing with knits, make sure to use a ballpoint knit needle on your sewing machine. It looks SO much nicer and you won't have weird holes or puckers in your fabric.
I didn't know to do this when I first started sewing, and boy can you tell a difference!! Those first few knit projects I did looked a lot rougher.

Make sure to get the ones that say "Jersey" or Ball Point" or "For Knits" on them, like this.

 Since the bottom half of my fabric strip was already hemmed and knit doesn't unravel, 

I just pinned the strip of white fabric to the inside of the bottom hem of her pink shirt.

Then I sewed it on and aha! A longer shirt.

It looks pretty cute too, if I do say so myself.
Of course, it looks even cuter when she's wearing it.

The other shirt I started with a 4"wide x 36" long piece of fabric and gathered it a bit for a ruffle

(here is a great tutorial for gathering/ruffling if you don't know how) 

and sewed it on the bottom hem of her shirt, leaving the bottom hem unfinished for a more deconstructed look.

I accidentally missed a little part of the back of the shirt at one point,

oops!

 so I had to go back and fix it.

much better. :)

Eliana loves her "new" shirts and I love that I don't have to buy her any new shirts!!! :)



Incidentally, the day I sewed these I was going down the list of blogs I read regularly and the fabulous Ashley at Make it Love it had the same situation on her hands with her daughter, except she chose to make some long-sleeved shirts into cute flutter sleeved ones. So there's another option if you want to use some long sleeved shirts from the next size up when your little girl gets taller overnight. I may make some flutter sleeved shirts for Eliana if she keeps growing so quickly! :)