anyone know how to convert regular tops to nursing top?

[naturallyspeaking]

HI,
Has anyone done this? THanks for sharing.
Kim

[mamadodson]

if you search jan andrea she has a tutorial for converting shirts into nursing tops!

[rubelin]

I converted several maternity tops into nursing tops after my oldest was born.

This first method only works for tops that are long to begin with, as you'll lose some length. I found it worked great with maternity shirts since they already had the front longer than the back.

1 - take out the side seams up to just below the armpits and slice the front straight across where you want an overlay (I did it a few inches below my breasts) and hem it.

2 - Attach the bottom piece of the front that got cut off to yoke made with a thin fabric (so that you don't add too much bulk to your top) that is cut sort of like a camisole, with either a deep V-neck or scooped out armholes for the nursing openings (I'll make armhole openings next time because the neck opening pulled funny when in use)

3 - Take the bottom piece with it's new top yoke and lay it under the hemmed front overlay, overlapping the original fabric a bit so the yoke won't show (when you cut hte yoke, make sure you measure against the original top half of hte shirt to be sure it will match up how you want it to)

4 - fasten the shoulders of the yoke to the shoulders of the shirt so that it lays nicely

5 - sew your side seams back up, catching all the layers at the overlay and fix the hem at the bottom if you need to.

The second method works is for when you don't want to cut up your original shirt AND the shirt is stretchy/loose enough to pull up only the front. For this one, make a thin underlay (similar to the yoke in the above example) that goes all the way down to the bottom of the main shirt. Stitch it to the main shirt at the shoulders and side seams and you're good to go

Oh, and you could make a full underlay (like a tank top with very scooped out armholes for nursing openings) and attach it at the shoulders only.