upcycling a vintage ninja turtles t-shirt

What happens when you go to the clothing swap and find a Ninja Turtles shirt that’s too small?

In this case, we created an entire collection around it called trtl powr.

The Miami Clothing Swap Society is a staple of the Brickell Underline Farmer’s Market every month, so we always bring a garment to swap.

Last month, we scored a vintage Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles America: The Radical t-shirt. It had an excellent nostalgic design, but it was a kid’s size large, which wouldn’t fit most people.

In an effort to make it a better fit for our customers (who love oversized tops), we upcycled it.

There are a lot of different ways to upcycle a t-shirt. You could crop it, create patchwork with the fabric, or use it as an applique for another piece.

In this case, we chose the applique method since we had a distressed denim vest that would fit the design nicely. The heather gray color of the shirt also matched well with the light denim wash.

To adhere the t-shirt fabric onto the vest, we first glued it using E6000 for fabrics. After it dried for a day, we stitched it to secure it further. Then, we cut out the denim panel to reveal the Ninja Turtles design. We kept some of the denim to create frayed edges that matched the distressed look of the vest.

The final result looks like it was always Ninja Turtles vest, only it fits more people now.

After finishing this upcycle, we decided to create a drop around it using the most TMNT color scheme possible.

Here are some of the upcycles from this drop: