I think I may have mentioned about 20 times that I attended the recent Police concert at Dodger’s Stadium in Los Angeles.  Aside from the two + hour drive from Santa Monica to Downtown and the churlish limo driver who wouldn’t move so we could get out of the parking lot at the end of the concert, it was a blast.

While there, of course I bought myself a t-shirt with the intention of making it into a tube top.  After finishing my Bada Bing! top though, I decided that rather than make the exact same thing with this t-shirt, I’d experiment a little.

I present to you, the Off-the-Shoulders-Sex-Pot top:

I am wearing a tank top under it, but I think I could pull off a strapless bra (spawns of Satan that they are) with it.

This top started out looking like this:

The first thing I did was add 1/8 inch elastic to the bottoms of the sleeves to make them kind of puffy.  It was an immediate improvement and completely feminized the top.

The next thing I did was cut the neck and shoulders off the top of the shirt.  This step was kind of a leap of faith.  I knew the look I was for but I didn’t have 100% confidence that it would turn out the way I envisioned it.

After cutting, I sewed about a 1/2 inch hem.  Next, I measured roughly enough elastic to go around my shoulders and arms and I sewed at the bottom of my hem so that there would be a slight "ruffle" at the top and none of the white elastic would show.

At this point, I had a top that I would’ve worn out of the house, but deep down inside I knew it wasn’t finished.  I let it sit a couple of days before deciding on what type of finish I was going to give it.

Originally, my plan was to keep the shirt longish and add a band to the bottom so that it would look kinda like this:

(picture from Old Navy.com)

My seamstress skills do not support doing something like this without a pattern, so I had to scrap that idea.  Thankfully, even after all the cutting I did in this mistaken attempt to add a band, I still had more than enough length in the body of the shirt to just add elastic around the bottom hem.  This provides (almost) the look I was going for with the band, and it was a whole lot easier to accomplish.

Someone asked me recently what my favorite Police song is and I’m not sure it’s possible to pick one.  Certainly, Every Breath You Take is a favorite.  Disappointingly, at the concert they played this as if they couldn’t wait for it (the song) to be over.  One got the feeling that if none of them ever heard or played this song again, they wouldn’t be sorry.

Back to trying to pick a favorite.  Impossible.  So I will pick three:

King of Pain
Message in a Bottle
Don’t Stand So Close to Me
Murder by Numbers

Okay, I lied, there are four.  (Actually, more than that, but I had to stop somewhere).