The Resourceful, Crafty Mom: How to resize a too wide t-shirt

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope you all are having a lovely day! I finally got time to get out my new sewing machine that my sweet hubby got me for Mother's day almost 2 weeks ago. I have been dying to make time to do it but went out of town with my boys all last week unexpectedly to spend time with my Granny and the rest of my family. Once we got back I have been cleaning and doing laundry and all the other household stuff to play catch-up. Well I am finally mostly caught up and everything is unpacked.....except Jonah's suitcase.....so today was the day to have fun with my sewing machine!

Here is my new beautiful Singer Sewmate 5400:

Isn't she beautiful??? She is totally amazing and super easy to use. It came with a quick-start guide that was so helpful that within 10 minutes of opening the box and taking the machine out I had done this:

Some of my stitches above are crooked or messed up due to four little hands that were trying to 'help' Mommy sew. lol The boys were just as excited as I was to use it. Jonah was just amazed watching the machine work.

For my first project I just wanted to start small since I haven't sewn anything since December and since I had just started with my new machine. My mother-in-law got the boys some shirts from a yardsale a few weeks ago for a quarter a piece. Most of them were the right fit but 3 Batman shirts were super wide on both boys. I knew these shirts would get worn a good bit since both my boys love Batman so I reworked them to make them smaller.
Here's the beginning shirts:

Each shirt was about an inch too wide on each side making my boys look like they were swimming in the shirt. I started by finding two shirts that fit my boys good to use for templates of how much material needed to be cut and sewn off. I then turned the shirts that were too wide inside out and laid them flat.

Then I laid the right fitting shirt on top of the wide shirt and pinned it in place. Try to make sure to get both shirts flat as possible to make sure your two side excess areas are even.

Once you have it pinned right, trace the right shirt width onto the wider shirt. I keep a white crayon in my sewing supplies for dark shirts like these. If you want to leave a bit more room than the shirt that fits right you can but the shirts I used don't fit my boys snuggly so they already have extra room in them.
This next step is optional but helps me....Next take your right fitting shirt off and pin the wider shirt right next to the traced line. I forgot to get a picture of this but it helps keep the shirt together while sewing. Next sew right on the white line taking the pins out as you go. As you can see below, my line was not straight so I used my sewing machine guides to make it straight. Don't worry if you get it a bit crooked, its really forgiving when you turn it inside out.

Next you are left with this:

Cut off the excess material close to your sewn line then turn the shirts back to the right side. Now you have perfectly fitted shirts!

I did all three of these shirts in 30 minutes with a few interuptions. The good thing about this is you can do this for any size t-shirt as long as you have a good fitting t-shirt you like for a template. So go hit up those thrift stores for some cheap t-shirts!

Here's my cute Tucker modeling his new fitted t-shirt: