Father-in-law needed some larger T-shirts, which meant a pile of too-small ones were destined for the charity shop – until I saw several holes in them.

I don’t know about you, but anything which is slightly damaged goes in the clothes recycle bin rather than the charity shop as I know lots of people are unable to make small repairs.

As the holes could either be cut around or patched, I decided to have a go at refashioning them into T-shirts for The Boys.

They were all polo-style shirts and the piqué fabric was good quality with plenty of wear in it yet.

Using a well-fitting T-shirt from No.3 Son’s drawer, I cut around the basic outline from the body of the shirt, cutting the sleeves from the original sleeves.

After sewing the shoulder seams, the sleeves were set in and the raw edges overlocked, then I sewed the side seams (right sides together) in one continuous seam from the sleeve hem to the bottom edge.

The raw edges of the seams and the hems were overlocked, then the hems were top stitched in place.

The side seams were reinforced at the bottom with some decorative stitching.

For the collar, I cut off a strip from the original polo collar, sewed the short edges to make a circle…..

….and stitched it to the neckline right sides together, finishing with some more top stitching.

Then to deal with the hole in the middle of the back….

I cut a square of left over fabric (about an inch larger than the hole all around) and pinned it to the inside over the hole.

Working from the right side, I used this stitch on my sewing machine (combined with a stitch length of less than one) to completely fill in the hole.

The repair is virtually invisible on the outside.

The inside looks like this: –

Trim close to the stitching for a neat finish.

No.3 Son was excited with his ‘new’ T-shirt!

I was just pleased to be able to make another wearable item from something which would otherwise have been discarded.

Now, onto the other two….