I wanted some new running tees for my half marathon training but was struggling to source activewear fabric. It's not always clear online whether activewear fabric is wicking or not, which is pretty essential for me, as the sweatiest runner alive. I also prefer to buy my fabric secondhand, so decided instead to buy some old tees from ReRun Clothing. Their mission is to extend the life of running clothing and to quote them directly, "The idea of ReRun was born, to try and prolong the life of running clothes and equipment and save them from landfill. Extending the life of clothes by just nine months of active use would reduce carbon, water and waste footprints by around 20-30% each."
I bought three tees from them, with the intent to turn them into styles and silhouettes more to my taste. I used the Christine Haynes Rumi tank for the racer back and the Grainline Studio Linden sweatshirt for the baggy tee. Each t-shirt was around £5-6, an absolute bargain when you consider how much you would pay to buy new fabric by the metre. Plus the obvious sustainability element of recycling resources already in circulation!
I bought a hot pink and royal blue tee, plus a t-shirt that I thought from the photos on their website was black, but was in fact navy when it arrived. I had planned to use the black tee to increase the size of my Edinburgh Women's 10km tee, which came up super small and I find is too up in my armpits to be comfortable for exercise.
Since the colour wasn't right for that project, I shelved the Women's 10km tee for another day and instead used the fabric to increase the size of a jewel green Nike tee that had shrunk in the tumble drier.
I carefully removed the side panels of the Nike tee and used this panel as a template for the new size. I cut the same shape out of the navy tee (used inside out here because the dark side had faded in patches) and added an inch on either side, making an increase overall of half an inch either side, once seam allowance had been taken into account. I should have done the maths in advance, rather than on the fly as I went, because really this tee could have done with more ease added in. Still, it's definitely more comfortable to wear now and was such an easy conversion that I could repeat it in the future if I need more size. It's saved this tee from being donated or shredded, since it's probably too worn to go to the charity shop sadly.
The hot pink tee was converted into this baggy number, courtesy of the Grainline Linden pattern. I cut the short sleeve version and re-used the original bottom and sleeves hemlines, to minimise my work. I saved as much of the dark pink fabric as I could and pieced it together to create the collar, so it would co-ordinate with the fabric under the arms (the original location for this colour). I'm really pleased with how it turned out, the collar looks much smarter than I was anticipating!
The last t-shirt was this royal blue and I converted it into a racer back tank using the Rumi pattern. I added in the diagonal stripe, using darker blue fabric from the same t-shirt, pieced together. I love the nostalgic nod to school gym kit, it makes me think of our summer athletic uniform or bibs we wore to play netball. I want to make another of these with a bright pop of colour for the stripe but the scraps I've got left weren't quite enough for a full top. I'll be hitting up ReRun again shortly, to source more recycled fabric!
