Canalis Shirt Tutorial

Lately I've been on a kid shirt redo kick so I decided to take a break from that and make something for me...finally, something for this Mama...

and, yes, it's another tshirt refashion.

It reminds me of tube corals on a shirt...

and that is why I named it Canalis which is Latin for "tube".

You will need two of the same color shirt; one shirt needs to be one size larger than what you normally wear.  Take the other shirt, fold in half - hot dog style and fold in half - hot dog style, again. Cut it into strips like this:

You will end up with lots of tshirt  loops...cut your loops in half at the seams...you want to take off the seams and then pull each strip till it curls up...do this to each one.

Now take the larger shirt and cut right at the seams...from the bottom of the shirt all the way to the end of the sleeves. You want to open up your shirt completely so that it is easy to sew on the strips of from the other shirt. 

Now start sewing your strips onto the front of the shirt, beginning from the neckline and work your way around the neckline and then start filling down and across...just take one strip and begin sewing and fill up the front of your shirt in any pattern you like. If a strip is too long, just cut it and use elsewhere on the shirt.  Use up as many strips as possible to get it to fill in nicely. Since  your shirt is opened up, you can sew on strips even over the seams at the shoulders and onto the back of the shirt...Have fun with it...Just be careful to sew down the middle of each strip and make sure that the curled up part doesn't get caught with the needle...

like this...but if it does, just stop, put your needle up, release the foot and gently tug and snip off the thread until the shirt is free again 

Once you've filled up the front of the shirt with lots of tshirt tubes, turn the shirt inside out and line up the sides again, pin and sew up again...once with a straight stitch and a second time with a zig-zag.  

And you're done

Once you wash it, the tubes will curl in more...if you end up with some strips that don't want to curl up, just take your scissors and cut across the length of the strip about half ways and they will curl up for you.