Regailing: Teen Tee Parties

When my girls were little, they loved tea parties. They would dress up, and then using a real, lovely tea set that I purchased from an antique shop, they would pour the tea and sip and chat about all sorts of things. They loved it and would do this for hours.

Then when my girls turned into teenagers we would do "Tee" parties. I had taught them all to sew but our interest in refashioning blossomed at our Tee Parties. We would gather big old T-shirts and cut them, sew them, tie them, etc. until they turned into something fun and new. We got our inspiration from the book, Generation T: 108 Ways to Transform a T-Shirt by Megan Nicolay. (Warning: this book has, what I think, to be a few very immodest recreations of T-shirts, so preview it first.) Of course there would be refreshing iced tea to sip while we worked!

T-shirt refashioning is so much fun. Jersey fabric doesn't frey so it's easy to work with. You don't even need to sew, if you don't want to. Many times I preferred the finished look of a sewn hem but my daughters liked the just-cut look. We made sleeveless summer tops, skirts, pillow cases, quilts, and tees with braids on the sides or fringe on the bottom. The sky is the limit!

The best part of our Tee Parties was the fun we had being together around the kitchen table sewing to our hearts content. We talked and laughed. Ahh... memories.

But then we were privileged to teach our techniques to other teens. My girls gained teaching skills by hosting parties for their friends. And now I'm doing the same thing with some girls in my class who expressed interest in my refashioning. The fun doesn't stop!

And since it's so much fun, I am having my own personal Tee Party with a shirt I got from World Vision after sponsoring our youth group's 30 hour famine. It was a large, so I cut a few inches off the bottom and sleeves. Also I cut off the collar rim.