Well, I hope you saw my t-shirt “quilt” patchwork maxi dress tutorial on Wednesday.

Of course, Sis needed something special for her VBS shirt refashion too!

I think we came up with a winner! 🙂

I actually thought of and made Sis’s dress before my patchwork dress, and having recently made her patchwork twirly knot dress and her “knotical” dress, I thought that maybe combining present and old VBS tees into a twirly style might be just about perfect!

I’ve become more accustomed to cutting up clothing, but I confess even I gave myself pause as I not only cut up Sis’s brand new VBS shirt… but I cut the logo in half too, EEK!

I cut off the [already upcycled and elasticated] neck of last year’s VBS t-shirt ruffle dress (I ended up switching the ribbons from pink stripes to navy polka dots), the chest and back of this year’s shirt (sleeves removed and cut off right under the armpits, like here), and shirts from other past VBS years (cut into 6″ long strips and sewn end to end).

The “got the rock?” red section is the front and back bodice piece (first tier). Then the second tier is about 1.5 times as wide, and the bottom (third) tier is 1.5 times as wide as the second (so three times as wide as the first). Two of the three bottom tier shirts were previous VBS shirts already turned into ruffle dresses, so I just added a ruffle to the bottom of this year’s shirt (you can see it above at the top left), so these three could be easily joined.

Then it was simply a matter of sewing the sections together. I pin each bigger section to the smaller hem above it, then scrunch (“ruffle”) the fabric as I go (like I show in this post), but you can also ruffle each tier and then sew them on. [Here’s a simple ruffling tutorial if you are looking for how to ruffle fabric.]

It was so fun to see all the shirts come together, and to give a new life to tees that have just been sitting around unworn.

And–oh!–the twirlability is fantastic!

Now the old shirts can live on in twirly VBS legacy style!