DownEast Inspired Shirt

So the other day I was on Pinterest (wow, I'm pretty sure all my sentences start that way now) and I saw this adorable shirt:

I clicked on it and it took me to DownEast Basics Clothing but it said that it couldn't find the shirt...so I assume it's no longer for sale. 

However, I had recently seen a tutorial here about how to make a braided shirt. So I thought to myself, I bet I can make that shirt. And I did!

I started with two plain pink tshirts, one my size and one a medium (they were only $5 each at Kohls! Yay!). Then I made slits in the shirt that fit me, like this:

It was rather terrifying, even though I had already tried it on the bigger shirt that I was going to cut up later. Anyway, I didn't start as high on the side where the flowers and bows were going to be because I knew that the flowers would cover up the braid anyway.

Then I braided the strips through like it said to do in the link above.

Then I cut out a bunch of strips from the bigger shirt, folded them in half, and ran the edge through the sewing machine to make a ruffly strip.

Then I wound up the strip and sewed it together making it a flower.

This is the back

And then I did it again, but with a longer strip so I had one flower bigger than the other.

The bow was about the same except I didn't ruffle the edges, I just did a straight stitch and then turned it inside out and tied it in a bow.

Then I put the shirt on and pinned the flowers and bow where I liked and hand sewed them on. Wa-lah!

Oh, and here's a picture from Sunday. I wore my ruffle skirt to church.

I got a lot of compliments on it! It was fun to say, "I made it myself!"