Day 91: Re-Fashion!

Sorry about Day 90 being a late post - it has a been a super crazy week!

I participate in a lot of sporting events and such, and you always seem to get a boxy cotton t-shirt from these events. I literally have dozens of them laying around that I don't wear because they don't fit right, even if I like the design they are usually just too big.

I started wondering what the carbon cost of one single cotton t-shirt was, and what I found was shocking to say the least!

-1/3 of a pound of pesticides and herbicides are required to produce just one cotton t-shirt
- World wide, cotton growers account for 25% of the world's pesticide and herbicide use
- For the total life cycle of the t-shirt, about 2.34 kg of green house gases are emitted (52% of this comes from raw materials, manufacturing, packaging, transport, retail and disposal - of the 48% from consumer use, most can be eliminated through hang-drying and washing cold)
- it takes about 1500 L of water to grow the cotton and produce the t-shirt

The take-home lesson is to avoid purchasing or ordering these t-shirts if possible. Buying organic cotton helps to reduce some of the pesticides and herbicides, but it doesn't change many of the other impacts. However, we all probably have closets full of shirts that we don't wear.

It really bothered me that I have in my possession so many high-carbon cost shirts that I don't really even wear, so I pulled out my seam ripper, scissors and sewing machine and decided to re-fashion a few!
I am by no means a skilled sewer, but I was pretty happy with my results (I wish I had taken before and after pictures!):

There are tons of ideas out there on the internet about how you can re-fashion an old t-shirt.

Here is what I did for mine:

1) First, I took my seam ripper and I removed the crew-neck collar on the shirt. Then, I folded it in half down the center of the shirt so I could cut out a v-neck. I then using my sewing machine to turn the edge over and finish the seam.
2) Next, I made the shirt more form fitting. I took one of my favorite t-shirts and laid it out on top of my project. I then traced the form onto the shirt and cut away the excess fabric on the sides and sleeves, sewed and zig-zagged the edges. Voila!  Fantastic new shirt!

I was super pleased with the outcome, because not only did I make something cool, I saved $20 that I would have spent on a t-shirt (had I needed one) and I re-purposed something into something useful!