This maternity shirt sat in my pile for 1 3/4 pregnancies, too big to be flattering but big enough to cover everything. Not necessarily the best position for a shirt who longs to be worn. The fabric is nice and soft, but it hung straight down (and loosely).
I stumbled upon some maternity shirt sewing posts (this, this, and this) and got inspired to sew for myself.
So I took this shirt for a spin, using the basic maternity "fashion" premise that everything looks better with an empire waist, or at least some sort of separation between breasts and belly (tight is ok if no empire waist, as long as you can see the separation).
To fix it, I put it on and marked with a pin where I wanted to waist to be. Then I took it off and measured how far down from the armholes it was. On the inside of the fabric, I used chalk and a ruler to draw a line across at that height from armhole to armhole.
I measured the length of this line and cut a piece of braided 3/4" elastic
to 2/3 of this length (as per one of the maternity shirt tutorials), then added an inch for the seam allowances. Then I mimicked the elastic on the top, which was sewn onto a folded piece of fabric. I did this by first attaching the elastic to each seam allowance. Then I folded the shirt on the line I had drawn. Next I stretched the elastic and pinned it in half then half again (3 pins) to make sure the stretch would be even across the "waist." I stitched the elastic to the folded shirt using a long semi-wide zig-zag.I love it now! What a great refashion!
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