Crochet border to repair a shirt

My daughter Sniffles(9) loves clothes. Or at last she loves the clothes she has. She wears them until they wear out and refuses to shop for new things unless I make her. Maybe when she is a teen, things will be different. Her favorite shirt was torn a few weeks ago. She wanted to wear it anyway, but with a big rip across the back it just looked terrible. I have been wanting to add a crochet border to a piece of clothing for a while, so this seemed the perfect opportunity.

I am pretty good at fixing clothes that come apart at the seams, but that wouldn’t work here. I let Sniffles pick a yarn color that matched her top and got to work. This project was actually pretty easy. You need to know the basics of embroidery and crochet, but I’ve linked to tutorials that are easy to follow if you are a newbie. To clarify, I use American crochet terms. I’ve broken this into several small steps so it is easy to follow.

How to crochet border on a shirt

Step 1: Preparing the shirt

I started by cutting off the uneven edge. This shirt was easy since I could just follow the lines. If you have a non-striped shirt, you may need to measure. This part won’t be seen in the end, so you can just eyeball it if you prefer. Of course, if the shirt you are adding the crochet border to is not torn, you can just skip this step.

Step 2: Creating a stitch line

Obviously there is nothing to crochet into on the shirt, so I needed to make a stitch line. Alternatively, you could punch holes in the material. This shirt is a thin jersey material though, so I don’t know how well that would have worked.

The easy way to make a stitch line to crochet into would be to run a loose blanket stitch around the edge with my machine. My sewing machine is old and cranky, so it doesn’t do anything loose. I also wanted to use a thick embroidery thread, which I wasn’t sure would feed through the machine right. I ended up sewing a back stitch by hand using blue thread.

I made the stitches pretty big – about half an inch long. They need to be big enough to serve as the foundation row to crochet into. I made them as close to the seam as possible. When you get to the end, just tie the thread in a knot.

Step 3: Hemming the edge

Next, I just folded the bottom hem under and ran it through my sewing machine. This makes the embroidery thread the new bottom edge. You can also do this by hand if you don’t have a machine but it will take longer. At this point, the shirt looks fine. Technically you could just stop here, but I thought it was a little short.

Step 4: Crochet round one

Creating the stitch line was really the hardest part of this. After that, I crocheted the first round. Slip stitch into any loop of embroidery thread. Single crochet around the entire shirt, making one stitch in each of the loops created by the embroidery thread. When you get to the end, slip stitch into the first stitch and start the next row.

Step 5: Crochet round two

For the second row, I crocheted a slightly more open pattern. Double crochet into every other hole. Chain between each stitch to prevent puckering. When you get to the end, slip stitch into the first stitch again.

Step 6: Crochet round three

For the third and final round, I created a cute ruffled edge. Some people call this a shell pattern. Again, you will crochet into every other hole. For this round though, there is no need to chain between. In each hole that you crochet into, follow this pattern: one double crochet stitch, three triple crochet stitches, one double crochet stitch. You will also chain between each of those stitches. When you get to the end, slip stitch into the first stitch.

Step 7: Finishing off

The only thing left to do is finish off the crochet border. Leave a tail a few inches long and cut the yarn. Weave the loose end back into the row to make it disappear. All done.

I am really happy with how this crochet border turned out. I used acrylic yarn, so it should be washable. If you use cotton, it will felt after a few washes. I will definitely be doing this again on something. Sniffles asked me if I might add the same color to the ends of the sleeves, so I may do that.