Today’s Tutorial: Let’s Cowl Something

I’m back again today 🙂 Hope you all have had a wonderful Sunday. I wanted to share with you something I played around with this weekend, cowl necks. I like the look and figured it would be a fun way to refashion t-shirts, tank tops, dresses, etc. Here is what I made for myself and for my daughter:

Mine was made from an too big t-shirt and that is what I will cover in the tutorial. As for my daughter, I just used an old tank top of mine, shortened the shoulder straps and added the cowl (which was part of a scarf I found while thrifting) . Super quick and easy.

Refashion something with a cowl neck???? Add it to the Flickr group to share with us.

What you need:
–Something to add a cowl to

–Material for the cowl (jersey, cotton, one sided, double sided, etc).
–Scissors
–Measuring Tape

1. If using a shirt with a tight neck, you need to cut off some to make the neck larger. I just cut off the ribbed neck from my shirt. I also cut the sleeves off as well.

2. Measure the lenth of the garments neck. That is how long the piece of material should be (plus an amount for seam allowance; I did 1/4″) if you do it with a rectangular piece of fabric like I did. If you want more “cowl”, you will want to make a trapezoid shape instead. If that is the case, the bottom of the trapezoid will be the neck length, plus seam allowances, and will taper out to your desired length. The height of the material is up to you.

*Now, if you are using a one sided fabric like me, double the height of what you want so you can fold it in half (the print will be seen on both sides). My daughters was double sided so I didn’t need to do this.

3. With right sides facing, pin the sides together to create the tube that will go around the neck. Sew across.

4. Turn right side out. If you have one sided fabric, fold in half to create a tube like this:

The bottom will be open.

5. Take the tube and place on the neck, right sides facing. The bottom of the tube will be the side to pin down. Sew together.

6. It will now look like this:

7. Fold down the seam the seam inside

and sew around on the shirt part to hold the seam down.

8. Optional: I then folded the cowl down over the shirt and sewed across the top again because I thought it looked better after trying it on.

Pockets:

I wanted to add some pockets to spice it up some, so I cut 4 pieces in this shape (I used leftovers from the sleeves for the pink part).

Then, I placed them right sides together and sewed all the way around, except leaving a small opening at the top for turning.

I turned them right side out, and then sewed across the top. Then pin the pockets on the shirt.

Sew them on all sides, except for the top. Add a button if you like. I then also shirred a few rows underneath the chest area to bring it in. Oh, and I also folded down the edges of the arm openings and sewed in place for a finished look.

A nose kiss from my little helper.