Sweatshirt Re-vamp!!

Am I the only one who wears sweatshirts aLmOsT every day???  I Love LOVE LOVE hoodies the most.  WELL sadly for me...it is no longer sweatshirt weather.  Which almost makes little tears come to my eyes because that means SWIMSUIT weather is not far behind-YIKES!!!  So I have come up with a solution....short sleeved hoodies.  I have one that I bought at Old Navy last year and I am a BIG fan--so I kinda based this sweatshirt on that one.  So I went on a search in my closet for long sleeved hoodies that I no longer wear, BUT that still fit well. This is what I found...

It has long sleeves--even though the retarded camara person (me) did not manage to get the actaul arms in the picture:)  I bought this sweatshirt forgetting that I am pastey white and need COLOR to make me look ALIVE:)  It just never did much for me.  SOOOO I decided to change it up a bit.

The shoulder had these pretty little brown flowers on it, so I decided to VAMP up the color. 

I stared with some red fabric paint.  I used a toothpick to color over some of the flowers.  I put a big paint glob on each petal and then spread it around with the toothpick.  I used a dab of black paint to make the center of the flower.

I added some blue flowers too and then traced the vines and leaves with a sharpie.  I then thought that I SHOULD have just used colored Sharpies for the whole thing--live and learn!!! I wanted to add some "weathering" to the sweatshirt as well, so I used my seam ripper and cut between the stitches on the pockets.

I went around the pockets and then along the whole bottom of the sweatshirt.

Next, I took some red embroidery thread and made some crooked stitches across the seams on the pockets.  Just a few uneven jagged zig-zags for fun.

HERE IS THE PART ABOUT SHORTENING SLEEVES:

I added some new pictures and directions for clarification--so now the pictures are of two DIFFERENT shirts.  Just ignore that:)

Then ON TO THE SLEEVE shortening.  I cut the first sleeve off and then held the cut sleeve up against the second one and cut off the same amount on sleeve number 2.

After cutting the sleeves off, I cut off the ribbing from the sleeves---this will be used as the bottom of the NEW short sleeve.

Since my arm is bigger than my wrist, I tugged on the ribbing a bit to stretch it out a little. 

Then I pinned the ribbing into the bottom of the sleeve.  I wanted a raw edge, so I just pinned it right inside and left the raw outer edge showing.  If you want a clean edge, you could fold the cut off sleeve under a quarter inch and then pin the ribbing into place. First I lined up the bottom seam of the ribbing to the bottom seam of the sleeve.  Then I stretched it across to the opposite side and pinned it  Then I pinned like crazy all the way around.  Stretching the ribbing to match up to the size of the sleeve.

Then I stretched the sleeve over the arm of my sewing machine and top stitched around the sleeve.

Ta-da!!!  Short sleeves and a cute little raw raggedy edge.

Now here are the directions for making clean seams--no raw edges. 

Turn your shirt inside out.  Then put your ribbing down inside the sleeves with the raw edges lined up.  Then line up the seam of the ribbing with the seam of the sweater (under the armpit).  This will keep the sleeves looking---un-homemade:)  Then stretch your ribbing and pin it to the other side--across from the seam.  Then stretch ribbing again and pin both of the ends (in between the two pins you already placed).  Now you should have 4 pins---one on each end.  This just makes sure that the ribbing is even all the way around.  Now pin like crazy--while stretching the ribbing.

You will have something like this.  It looks like you will have a mess, but when you stretch the arm over your sewing machine it pulls the ribbing tight and it all works out--promise:)

Next, stetch your sleeve over the arm of your sewing machine and sew around the edges.  I used a quarter or bigger seam just to be safe. 

VOILA---short sleeves.  SOOO cute right????  I love short sleeved sweatshirts more than----well lets just say they are almost as good as chocolate:)  but NOT quite♥

Now back to the rest of the sweatshirt:

Last, I took some sandpaper and brushed it over the paint so that it didn't look quite so......painted.  It took some of the excess off and made it look a little more weathered.

I really could not be happier with the final result.  I WILL be trying this one again SOON (I already have the poor unsuspecting sweatshirt in mind).