T-shirt upcycling/hacking/repurposing workshop Saturday, August 20

Once you get in the groove of t-shirt recon/repurposing/upcycling/hacking it's hard to focus on anything else. ;-) There are so many cool blogs out there that give tutorials about how to refashion your favorite t-shirt...whether you've worn it so much there's only enough fabric left for a pocket or it never fit right to begin with or it used to fit perfectly but not so much anymore or you just want to give an old t-shirt a new life.

For those who want hands-on guidance, there will be a T-Shirt Cutting Workshop in Yellow Springs on Saturday, August 20. The workshop is being offered by Cedarville Zumba instructor, Melissa Vanzant, who has been teaching Zumba for almost a year at the Bryan Center and other places in the village. Melissa loves to hack t-shirts and loves to Zumba and is combining her two passions that day. Feel free to come to one or both. Here are the details:

what: T-shirt cutting workshop AND Zumba basics demo
where: Bryan Center Gym, 100 Dayton Street, Yellow Springs
when: Saturday, August 20

T-shirt Workshop: 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Zumba Demo and Class: 12:30-1:30 p.m.

Fee: $5 for workshop and stay for Zumba at 12:30 for free! Or just come to Zumba at 12:30 and pay the usual $2 donation cost.

Description: Come and see different ways to customize and cut your old t-shirts to create funky new tops! Bring your own old t-shirt to cut. Afterwards, see a brief, Zumba basic steps demo to perfect some of the common steps used in our Zumba classes. Then stay for the full Zumba class directly after so you can practice the steps in a real class.

For more information, contact Melissa at 937-581-0111.

Her usual class schedule is as follows:

Zumba
Bryan Center Gym
Tuesdays at 6 p.m.
Thursdays at 6 p.m.
Saturdays at 12:30 p.m.

There will be some changes in the near future and some classes will take place at Antioch South Gym. To keep up on the changes, visit Melissa's blog at
http://melissaheartszumba.blogspot.com or see Melissa Vanzant on Facebook.

To get you in the mood, I've included some great sites below where you can learn all about t-shirt "recon". WARNING: These sites often lead to other sites which lead to other blogs which lead to video tutorials and pretty soon, your entire day is shot and you haven't done anything else!

http://www.lekkner.com/recon/gallery/

http://diyfashion.about.com/od/diytops/ss/TshirtTank.htm

http://www.instructables.com/id/Cut-Up-the-Back-of-your-T-Shirt-Simple-DIY-Tutor/

http://www.somethingshinyblog.com/2010/01/how-to-make-shrug-from-t-shirt.html