NHSS Dress

Today I handed in the complete and final version of my thesis to my university, marking the end of my Master's degree.  I was feeling a bit nostalgic, which made me remember this shirt!

NHSS!

This, my friends, is a very boring navy blue T-shirt from my days with the Northern Historical Student Society (known to our friends as the History Club).  There is nothing wrong with this shirt, but I've never worn it because I find few pieces of clothing as dull as event T-shirts.

Fortunately, I also had this exceedingly dull but oh-so-comfy dress that I picked up yesterday for $1 at my favourite thrift store!

Boring!

These two pieces were about to become one!

"You complete me!" says boring blue dress to T-shirt

First, I cut out the only interesting part of the T-shirt, the NHSS icon on the side.

Snippy snip!

Then I trimmed it to a shape I liked, and tried out a few different placements on the blue dress.  I settled on this:

Looks kind of super hero-ish, doesn't it?

I pinned it down very securely.  Both of these pieces were a bit stretchy and I didn't want the appliquéed bit to go wonky.

LOTS of pins!

Then I thought of something else!  We're in the middle of winter, here in the British Columbian north, and that means temperatures regularly hit -20 Celsius (it was -25 when I got up this morning).  No way was I going sleeveless, even indoors!

Since the T-shirt was toast anyway, I decided to transplant its arms onto the blue dress, too.

Mwahahaha!

I pinned the sleeves onto the dress, then, after fighting with my sewing machine for a full half hour, taking it apart, cleaning the inside (ew!), and putting it back together, I stitched everything together with white thread because I wanted the stitching to show on the appliqué.

Stitching away!

I trimmed off the extra fabric from around the edge of the NHSS image.

Goodbye, awkward ruffle

Then I noticed THIS!

ARG!

I'd accidentally stitched through the front AND back of this dress at one part of the appliqué!

I grabbed my seam ripper and quickly fixed the problem, then restitched that part of the NHSS down to just the front part of the dress.

And here's the result!

Here she comes, to save the day!

I feel like a history superhero, saving the world one incorrect date at a time! I like that I finally have a way to wear my NHSS loyalty without having to don a dull T-shirt, and those sleeves keep my shoulders nice and comfortable in this cold weather, making this a dress I can wear right away without waiting for summer!

Have you ever refashioned a boring event T-shirt?  How did you do it?