Save This Shirt: Cut It. Stitch It. Wear It Now!

Hannah Rogge faced a common quandary. She had a closetful of oversized T-shirts—leftovers from old boyfriends, charity-event giveaways, rock-concert souvenirs, gifts from relatives’ travels. She rarely wore any of them—they weren’t exactly flattering—but she wasn’t ready to throw them away.

What to do? Well, this ever-inventive industrial designer and jewelry designer, who just loves making something from nothing, decided to save those shirts by cutting them apart and stitching them back together, creating garments she might actually want to wear—a sexy lace-up tank top, a racer-back tank top, and a mini skirt—as well as useful accessories, including a belt and a tote bag. And she figured out how to complete almost all of them in less than an hour (either by hand or with a sewing machine) for just a few dollars.

Now everyone from the most craft-savvy to the craft-challenged can do the same by following Rogge’s step-by-step illustrated instructions for her most popular designs. Save This Shirt even comes with a cool large T-shirt —imprinted with the Save This Shirt logo and compressed into a tiny T-shirt-shaped block—to use for practice.