Zumba shirt "How To" Part2: The halter

After you have completed the weave section of the shirt you can move on to the rest of it :)

First lay the shirt out flat on your work surface. I just used my kitchen table.

First step, cut off the sleeve seams. Don't cut too far in, just right by the seam.

Cutting out the sleeve seams makes it easier to cut from on arm hole to the other bc you don't have to cut through the seams. So as you've already guessed this step is cutting a strait line from the bottom of one arm hole to the bottom of the other. If you need help doing this you can use fabric chalk and a ruler to draw the line.

Lay the flap you've created out and....

....make a clean snip right through the middle of the top portion.

Cut out the neck seam. You can do this before, like while you're cutting the sleeve seams off, but of course while I was taking picture I didn't think about that haha but either way it needs to come off.

Place your stencil in the middle of the top back portion of the shirt. Very carefully bc tshirt fabric like sot move on you and is very slightly elastic :/ run your marker around the outside lines of your logo stencil. Remember that you're going to be coloring it in so what it looks like inside doesn't matter. It's the outside lines that count! You could also use fabric paint and sponge it on over the stencil which would probably look pretty awesome.

Now that you've got your outline you can color it how ever you'd like. You could even get wild and use another color marker, whatever you do make sure its permanent!

If you decided to partial color like I did it should look something like this. If not it should look similar to whatever the logo (on paper) was before you made it into a stencil. You're getting close!!!!

Now its time to break out your sewing kit!!!

Before you begin sewing you are going to need to cut the top part of the shirt off with just enough material left on top to fold over. Do not throw the excess away yet!

Find a similar color thread and using the picture below as a guideline sew little stitches through the bottom of your folded over material. This is going to help hold your strap on. make sure you leave enough space to pull some ribbon or material through there! You're going to do this on both sides.

Here is the finished sewing on one side. Now, if you have a sewing machine feel free to break it out and just sew a line right across there. It'd be a ton easier, but I don't have one so this is how I did it.

Now remember I told you not to throw the left over material away yet? This is why! The bottom of your left over scraps is the same length as the top of the shirt you just sewed on so cut about a half inch to an inch of material off the bottom of your scrap.

Stretch it just like you did with the weave strands until it curls.

Pin a safety pin to one end. (this just makes it easier to pull through) Pull it all the way through the space you left and remove the safety pin. Once your safety pin is out tie the ends of the strand together in a knot and pull tight! then circle the loop you just made through until you can't see the knot anymore.

Once you have both sides done it should look like the above photo. This was before i turned it to hide the knots...

Find two ribbons or whatever you want the rest of your straps to be made of (a string of beads would probably be really cute, but not for a shirt you're going to do zumba in, i cant imagine that would be too comfortable) and a needle and matching color thread.

(again before i turned the knot) Put the ribbon through the loop, only about an inch on the "in"side.

fold it over so you can sew it together. just a few stitches side to side one direction and then back the other direction to ensure its going to stay Then knot it and cut off the excess thread.

It should look similar to this when you're done sewing it.

and here's the back when its completed

And I know you don't want to see a picture of my boobs, but once again make sure you try it on to see that it looks right. It should look something like this in the front when you're done.

Hopefully you understood that pretty well!!! I hope you enjoyed this Zumba shirt tutorial, there will be more to come soon hopefully. I will continue to post updates on my faebook and I'm actually currently working on a video on "the weave" that will be much easier to follow, so look for that too. Thanks so much for reading!!!