Pin-spiration; DIY Nursing T-Shirt

If you’ve read anything about breastfeeding I’m sure you know about the many benefits to nursing; it promotes bonding between mother and baby, it gives the baby’s immune system a boost, it helps the mother’s uterus to contract after birth and can help with loosing that maternity weight more quickly, plus it’s way less expensive than formula feeding.

But there are also some obstacles associated with nursing; cracked and sore nipples, plugged ducts, Mastitis, more frequent feedings (as compared with formula-fed babies), and the logistics of breastfeeding discretely in public so that you can some day leave your house!  So far, six weeks into baby number one, I have dealt with all of the above obstacles.  And today I’m going to address that last one; dealing with discretely nursing in public.

For some, the answer is using a large bib-like fabric such as a Hooter Hider.  These are great and in fact I have one that was given to me by my sister-in-law.  You can even find tutorials (such as this one) for how to make your own.  But although they are fantastic and have their place, I don’t always want to have a huge piece of fabric draped over me, which can be awkward to maneuver with a hungry, fussy baby.  Plus, I also feel like it draws more attention to what I’m doing; feeding my baby.

This predicament lead me to start searching out DIY nursing tops on Pinterest.  I found several that I thought were cute, but chose this one from Project Open Hearts for my first attempt.  Allison wrote a very comprehensive tutorial on how to make a discreet nursing top using two identical shirts (or two nursing tops using 3 shirts).

For my top I used two shirts that I had on hand that had seen better days to say the least.  The short sleeve top, which is my main shirt, actually had several holes in the front, making it the perfect candidate for this project since that section of the shirt was removed.  Though both of my tops are brown, they are not exactly the same color, but it doesn’t really bother me.  I kind of like how the two tone turned out actually.

The other way that my top differs from Allison’s is that I didn’t hem the overlapping section of the main shirt that hangs over the replaced section of the shirt.  Also, the long-sleeved shirt, which I used to make the new front panel, was not as long as the short-sleeved shirt.  Though I cut the long sleeve shirt just under the armpits, the fabric does not reach that far up on the finished shirt.  I don’t find this to be a huge problem though, because I did leave a generous amount of length for the overlapping part of the shirt.

Below is my finished DIY nursing top using Allison’s tutorial and my own recycled shirts that were on their way to the rag pile.  I do intend to make more of these, possibly with new shirts, but using what I already had was quicker and I didn’t have to worry about messing it up and wasting money on new clothes if it didn’t work out.

And here is how it works…

And here is Virginia trying it out for the first time!

See, very discrete.

Thank you for stopping by.  This has been another installment of my Pin-spiration series, where I do a project that I find on Pinterest and share it with you all!  Keep pinning and keep crafting!

Question; are you on Facebook?  Me too!  find me here!

This post has been linked up to Made By You Monday #11 6 over on Skip to my Lou and Make it Pretty Monday #14 over on The Dedicated House!