'Merican Pride Tee

This look is inspired by one of my students.  She wore a shirt just like this to a Zumba fundraiser - and I've wanted to make my own ever since.

Step 1:  Buy an over-sized (1 or 2 sizes bigger works well) USA/4th of July inspired Tee.  I found this one at Walmart for $4.98.  Old Navy usually has a lot of these shirts too.

Step 2: Try the shirt on and mark with a pencil/safety pin where you want the strands to go up to.  You can make it as high or low as you'd like.  Remember the higher you go, the more midriff exposure there will be. (You could make it go really high and wear a tight blue tye-dyed tank underneath... so you get hints of blue).  

Step 4: Cut the shirt upwards into 4 sections: Front middle, back middle, left side, right side.

Step 5: Work with only one of your quarter sections at a time.  For every original quarter section, cut in half, and cut those in half again. (See above). Then I cut 3 strands for each new quarter as you can see above.  So if we are looking at only the original quarters from the first pic of the cut shirt, you will get 12 strands per quarter.  In all, you will end up with about 48 strands on the entire shirt.  OR cut it however you'd like.  Cutting it into sections helped me keep it all even.

Wear with jean shorts, or a bathing suit bottom!  You can get crafty and add beads to every strand, or knot every strand, or cut the strands smaller and braid them... Options are endless.

I'm ready for a picnic and fire works.  Plus, I could wear this tee all summer long and show (what's left of) my 'merican pride.