DIY: Banana Republic Braided Neck Tee Shirt

by Kira @ Her New Leaf on July 21, 2011

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Have you guys heard of Pinterest? Pinterest is a virtual “pinboard” that allows you to visually bookmark images from all over the internet. You can sort your images onto separate pinboards to share them with friends and other pinners. It’s really fun and has been a great way for me to organize photos for fashion and home inspiration, as well as links to all the fabulous DIY tutorials I find and want to file away for a rainy day. If you wanna check out Pinterest, you can view my boards.

A few weeks ago I came across this image on Pinterest:

“Banana Republic Braided Top DIY”

Image: jaynsarah.blogspot.com via Danielle on Pinterest

I love adding new projects to my DIY pinboard so I followed the link, which led me to a blog post entitled “Banana Republic Braided Top DIY… but Fail.” Whoever pinned the photo left out the fail part – this was no tutorial, it was a FAIL-torial! So, feeling a little cocky about my t-shirt remaking skills, I quickly re-pinned the photo with the caption “I bet I could figure out how to recreate this!” What can I say, I’m kind of a jerk sometimes.

Since this was the only photo I had of the shirt, I went to the Banana Republic site to try to find the top for sale. No dice, it must’ve been a few years old. So I turned on my expert Google skills (seriously, you ever need help Googling something, ask me) and found another pic on another blog.

Image: mustaddfabricsoftener.blogspot.com

It was another tutorial, but again, not ideal. It involved a lot of sewing and I am lazy, so I again bet that I could find a better way. Now I’m gonna show you how to do it!

Step 1: Find a shirt you’ve clearly never worn, made obvious by the fact that the tag is still attached. Make sure it’s really wrinkly. Bonus points if it has dog hair on it.

Step 2: Cut vertical slits all around the neck. Mine were about 2 inches long and a little less than an inch apart, but they don’t need to be perfect. You should make the first slit about half as long as the rest, since the weaving technique will cause it to open up into a hole. It’s okay if you don’t, though, you can just sew it up like I did.

Here’s a few pics to show you the scale of the slits I made. They definitely weren’t perfect, but they don’t have to be!

Step 3: Here comes the technical part. Take loop #2 and push it under loop #1, then pull it through in the direction of the remaining loops. It’s not hard, but if you do it wrong, just smooth your shirt out and start over.

Step 4: Continue by pushing loop #3 through loop #2 and so on. If you ever made a potholder out of loops when you were a kid, this is the exact same thing. You did it when you were a six-year-old at summer camp, you can do it now!

Step 5: Keep going and you’ll see your braid start to form. If you don’t, undo it and start over, no big deal, I’m not judging.

When you get to the end, you’ll need to sew a few stitches to attach the last loop to the shoulder of the shirt. I also had to put a few stitches at the beginning of my braid where the hole opened up, but I told you about that already, so yours should turn out even better than mine!

At this point, you could add a second row of slits and do a second braid like on the Banana Republic shirt, but my shirt had already become pretty low-cut so I didn’t. If you want a two-braid shirt, I recommend you start with a higher-cut shirt. Or if you don’t have a problem sharing your boobies with the world, go for it, girl! Like I said, I’m not here to judge!