I’ve long wanted to upcycle a flannel shirt into something a bit more interesting and found the perfect garment in the Pinjarra Salvos Op Shop. It’s got a subtle plaid, but I did find the lack of pattern matching rather confronting. However, the shirt was new and very cheap, so I bought it. There must be a dozen flannos in my family, but no-one was prepared to sacrifice one!

It was a bit oversized, but that was good.

This is a quick upcycle. I removed the bottom of the sleeves, basically to the top of the placket. I could have made them shorter, but I’m not a massive fan of three-quarter length sleeves.

I wanted a fuller lower sleeve so I added godets in to the seam. I did try to pattern match, with limited success.

I cut off the bottom of the shirt and made a deep facing from a piece of flannel I had in my stash. I sewed in a wide piece of bias binding above it and threaded elastic through to create some shape.

I also changed out the buttons. Shirts always have uninteresting buttons, in my opinion. I had to find ones that would fit the buttonholes as I didn’t want to get into redoing them, and I found the perfect buttons in my stash; I think you’ll agree that the blue checked buttons are a big improvement.

So a quick and fairly simple upcycle but I really like it. I’ve already worn it a couple of times and it’s warm and layers beautifully.

I can wear it closed like a shirt or open like a jacket.

The elastic distorted the button band a bit, so I added an extra button at that point to keep it flat. In the photos above I pinned the button band down.

I can style it with lots of different garments. It looks good with my green merino turtle neck, which always gives me school uniform vibes, the shacket tones it down a bit.

and my blue merino turtle neck and wool flannel Stokx Play Pants.

I wore this outfit for my catchup with Dana, @littledanadoes on IG, and what a lovely catchup it was!

I’m now on the hunt for more flannel shirts as I’m keen to try a couple of other ideas. I might have to send out a “lock your wardrobe” alert to the family!