My 14 year old daughter heads off for a week of orchestra camp on Saturday. During the week, they get the chance of swimming in the river near the college where the camp takes place. My lovely daughter is pale and freckled, the worse kind of complexion to spend a day in the sun.

Enter the No Sew Swim Shirt. This is the second version of this shirt I’ve made, the first having done it’s duty honorably for several summers now.  The sides are nice and open so the water will flow through your shirt and not weigh you down.  A must for any super-sun-sensitive gal.

There really is no sewing and you only need a couple of supplies and you’ll have your own No Sew Swim Shirt in about 10 minutes!

You’ll need:

• 1 t-shirt, at least 2 sizes too big, in a light color to reflect the sun
• a pair of scissors
• a large ruler OR yardstick
• cutting mat OR masking tape with 1″ intervals marked to about 20″

spread the t-shirt out, making sure the top and bottom are nicely aligned

cut off sleeve just inside the seam line, save for another project

repeat for second sleeve

slice up sides of t-shirt

smooth out the side of the t-shirt, using either the cutting mat and a ruler (shown) OR a yardstick and masking tape, measure 3″ from the cut edge along the shirt sides, cutting up those 3″ at 1″ interval

repeat on both sides, stopping before the sleeve area

snip off the bottom curve of the sleeve

remove bottom hem

starting at the top of one side, tie together front and back 3″ pieces

repeat for all 3″ pieces

repeat on the second side of the shirt

Done! Because this was a blank shirt, I added an iron-on dragon to jazz it up a bit.

side close up

Old No Sew Swim Tee, too small now and at the end of it’s sun-protecting days!

This one was stenciled using acrylic paint and my pirate stencil.

If you make a Sew Awesome Craft or any pattern, craft or recipe from sewhooked, I’d love to see a photo. Email me or add it to the sewhooked flickr group.