Something Old into Something New: Doggie t-shirts for a Furry Lady

A theatre colleague and generally awesome person Carolyn recently commissioned me to make some shirts for her equally awesome furry friend Minnie. Minnie was a rescue dog who suffered burns to her back and actually needs shirts to protect her from the elements where she can’t grow fur. For a dog that had such a traumatic beginning to life, she’s super friendly and you can tell that both parties have an increased quality of life now that they’ve found each other.

Carolyn has been searching for quality t-shirts and cooler weather dog-wear for awhile and found that in general, they are made for novelty purposes and overpriced for something that didn’t quite cut it for Minnie. They needed to be comfortable enough for daily use and stand up to the wear and tear of a large active dog.

For the initial batch, she brought me a selection of human t-shirts she’d collected for the purpose, and a couple of well worn dog shirts that had a good fit. I used the latter to make a pattern – similar to a tank top but the ‘front’ is a lot smaller than the back so that the leg holes sit forward and allow Minnie to move naturally. Her custom shirts also have an extended back panel to make sure she’s covered.

The first version used two of the provided shirts – one of which (unbeknownst to me) had some serious sentimental value to Minnie’s owner. I made the main part of the shirt out of another, larger shirt – the pattern needs to have length so a bigger size is better. I used the lettered part of the pink shirt as a large patch, the back of the shirt for the back of Minnie’s and strips cut from the rest of it to make binding for the openings. Binding the edge by stretching the doubled strips creates a snug but elastic fit, helping to keep the shirt on Minnie who is famous for ditching her clothes if she can.

 

The second shirt was an old festival staff shirt, with some additional yellow t-knit from a thrifted shirt for contrast binding. The ‘staff 2010’ was originally on the back of the shirt, so I added it to the lower part of Minnie’s. She’s clearly staff.

 

Shirt #3 got the nautical treatment. The main fabric was a rather short tank top, so the shoulders got pieced and additional fabric from another shirt was used to make up the right shape. The same blue material was used to bind it. It’s been awhile since I’ve freehand painted on fabric but I really enjoy doing lettering so I designed the patch on the commuter and used that as a guide to paint the image using silk screen inks (fully washable!) All of the patches were attached using a zig-zag stitch while gently stretching both layers to make sure they will stay put when the shirts are put on, removed, and washed.

The final piece in Minnie’s summer collection was from a vintage novelty shirt c. 1970s that was so awesome I had to document the image so that in future I can make a silk screen of it and put it on all the things.  It had been washed enough times that some of the glitter lettering had started to come off, so I dry brushed gold and orange silk screen inks to do a bit of restoration on them.

 

The original shirt had a v-neck, so in order to make up the shape I first removed the neckline ribbing, then added some cotton mesh fabric (which I also used for the front of the shirt for style and keeping cool) before re-installing the ribbing on the modified shirt. For the leg openings, I used a similar orange fabric from another shirt.

Nerdy construction details: Where I filled in the V-neck, I reinforced the seam with topstitching. Otherwise as far as construction and edging, these shirts were almost entirely serged. To get a neat finish, I overlapped the ribbing strips where they connected and angled them into the seam. This made it easy to apply ‘freehand’, stretching it as I sewed to get a good fit without pre-cutting or pinning.

 

Here’s a couple of teaser pics of the lady herself testing out the first shirt.

In the near future I hope to do a proper model shoot with Ms. Minnie. I’ll be sure to update this post with action shots!

~ Heather