Several of my friends are pregnant or just had babies. Actually, I think it might be all of them. But, in light of this, I have been seeing a bunch of FB posts and the like asking about nursing tanks. It turns out, there aren't very many good ones out there in a reasonable price range. I decided to fix this.
Step One: Gather supplies
- Tank top (I like the ones at target that are about $9.)
- Scissors
- Extra wide bias tape
- ResQ Tape (because pinning bias tape is a pain in the butt)
- Snaps
- Snap pliers (not pictured)
- Marking chalk
- Sewing machine and thread
Step 2: Deconstruct
I measured about 5 inches from the shoulder seam on each side, made a mark with the chalk, and made a clean cut where I wanted the snaps to go.
Step 3: Reconstruct
Cut your bias tape to the length of the cut sides.
Open up the bias tape and line it with the ResQ tape.
Making sure the wider side of bias tape faces the outer side of the tank top, adhere the bias tape to one side of the tank.
Flip it over to adhere the other side of bias tape.
Set your sewing machine to a stretch stitch and sew all 4 sides of the bias tape.
Step 4: Snaps!
I bought my pliers on
Amazon for less than half the cost of our local Joann. You can also get the
easy attacher if you don't want to be able to do eyelets later.
Using the rubber ring, place one of the rings with pointy sides facing the center on the metal side.
Then place one of the nubs into the plastic side so the nub is in the tool.
Line it up so the nub is on the inside (wrong side) of the top shoulder piece, and squeeze! Repeat for both shoulders.
Do the same thing for the bottom of the snaps, but make sure the RING is on the inside of the shirt this time!! Note: I made the mistake twice on the nub-less sides of putting it going the wrong direction. If you need to take out a misplaced snap, use a small flat screwdriver head and just push it in to the ring side, parallel to your fabric. They pry out fairly easily. The ring will be mangled and you will need a new ring, though!
Step 5: Admire your work!
This project took me an hour to do 3 shirts, and that included the time it took to drag out my sewing machine, re-thread it, and put everything away.
