Following on from yesterday’s Boston Street Running refashioned top, I thought I’d show you the other refashioned race tee I made from my starting pile, the “BTG” one in the centre:
This one has a whole lot of meaning for me – the urban running crew I’m part of, Run dem Crew, has a bunch of sister crews all over the world with a similar ethos, so when we go to races in other countries, the host crew lays on parties, sightseeing, and pre-race hospitality. When crews get together like this, it’s called “Bridge the Gap”, and the Copenhagen crew even designed special shirts to commemorate the Copenhagen marathon weekend.
But I was a bit late to the Expo, and they ran out of Medium shirts, so I asked to be given the largest size they had, which was XXL! (Why they thought they needed to print any that big for marathon runners is another question entirely!). So this one was ripe for refashioning, and I had a lot of fabric to work with, which was great.
When I Bridge the Gap, I really bridge the gap!
The original shirt had the blue NBRO man on the front, with BTG and the date underneath, and the back had “The Peloton of Awesome” and all the participating crew logos across the shoulders. There were also mesh panels running down the sides, which I used in the Boston Street top instead. Unlike that top, however, here it was absolutely essential that I preserved the original designs.
But when I went to cut out my self-drafted running top (the same one I used for my Paris race tee), the placement of both the front and back designs was too high, and would’ve gotten cut off by the scoop neckline, and the racer back. In order to lower these, I knew I’d have to do some clever piecing.
So I turned to my good friend Miss Fishnet Insertion Elastic, which of course you’ll remember from my running leggings, and here I used it to make those seams look completely intentional, and to add interest to the front shoulders and the racerback.
Once that was inserted, I just treated it as regular fabric, and used my coverstitch binder again to finish the neck and arm edges. The white fabric is actually leftover from the digitally printed lycra I bought for my wildest running leggings, believe it or not! It looks like the printer can’t reach right up to the edge, so there are white borders a few inches wide on the sides, which meant I had great lengths for binding. I’m rather chuffed with myself for that clever bit of re-using!
I even reused the “Genuine Nike” label and gave it pride of place next to my FehrTrade logo near the front hem!
No points for guessing that this is from the same photoshoot session as the Boston Street Running tee! I just did a quick swap of the tops and carried on shooting…
