Shirt – Page 2 – Hopefully Creative

Getting Ready to Ref

I may have mentioned before that I am part of a roller derby team. We haven’t played any games yet, but we are starting to get there. It’s very enjoyable to practice the skills and do things on 8 wheels, but I am not yet sure whether I like getting bruised. Next to that, I generally find rules very interesting and the rules of roller derby are no exception. I voluntarily read all the rules before it was even necessary and I tend to remember them too. Only one logical conclusion could be found, exploring refereeing was the way to go.

Part of refereeing is the outfit. You need to have a shirt with about 1 inch (2.5 cm) wide white and black vertical stripes. Officially it also needs to be professionally made, but for practising I think home-made would also be fine.

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Fabric was really hard to find! I haven’t been able to find black & white stripes of 2.5 cm wide in the vicinity. At some point I found a top at a local shop with the correct width but then the stripes were horizontal. I bought two of those shirts in the largest size and decided to harvest the fabric from those. This means that there is a seam across the bust and back, but it does not bother me. The pattern is my standard shirt pattern, with sleeves. I chose a v-neck, because it makes it easier to get over the head (with helmet). The bands from the tops were also reused for the neckline and sleeves. The project was a long time in the making, since about January, but I finally finished it!

The sleeve bands have a small opening, I wanted to see if that would work. It does, and I like it. The hem was done with a stretch twin needle, I was very happy that that worked too! I haven’t worn it on skates yet, but so far, I am happy with it!

Flowery Shirt

After finishing the playsuit, I had a small piece of fabric left over. Knowing that if I didn’t do something with it immediately, it would remain forever in the stash, I started a new project with it. I found my ‘shirt’ pattern and cut that one out without the sleeves. It was a lot less wide too, since there was not enough fabric, officially. I sewed it at about 3 mm seam allowance, but it did fit when I pulled it on over my head. I had it basically done the same night as the playsuit, apart from 1 sleeve band. Of course that sleeve band took until last weekend to actually sew, but now the shirt is done and it has been worn.

I quite like the shape of the neckline, but I think I may have pulled the band a little too much. Or there just wasn’t enough stretch in it. Anyway, I do like the armpit area. I think it looks quite clean. The shirt also does not feel mega tight when on, so that is a positive aspect too.

It’s always nice when you can use up all the fabric and not have much left over. I declare light yellow flower fabric conquered!

Cut Out Top

So, I found a new website with free patterns on it, always a good time. It’s called On the Cutting Floor, and it has a number of interesting, but mostly simple, patterns. I found one that was really cute, called Cut out top (you can find the tutorial here). The free patterns are size 4, which I hoped would sort of fit me. The pattern was printed, I cut it out, cut out the fabric (the same fabric as the Shrug) and sewed it all together. I did make some changes to the shoulders (squared them a little) and took in the sleeve cap a little. I think I also possibly overlapped the cut out bits a little more.

I still need to wear it out, but I hope that it will be nice and warm and that I will be able to wear it by itself. The length of the body seems quite nice and covering but the sleeves may be a little too long. We will see once I wear it out, wish me luck!

New Shirt Pattern

I found another shirt pattern in one of my pattern magazines: Simplicity Naaimode nr 4. This one has a center back seam and either a boat or a v neck. With some fairly badly recovering red/off-white striped jersey I decided to try it out.

I managed to match the stripes along the seams pretty well, and I quite like that it manages to be straight-ish at the back, as bottoms generally stick out more than backs do. The back seam is very curved, to accommodate the sway back. This is why it looks so much longer at the center back on the hanger, see below. It’s currently still on that hanger, so I should stick it in the closet soon.

I have already cut the remainder of the striped leggings fabric (piecing significant bits), to this pattern, with some modifications. So hopefully, I’ll be able to show that soon too, although it’s very hot, and sewing in hot conditions isn’t always very nice.. We’ll see when super summer ends again!

Summer Shirts

I seem to have cultivated a preference for thin fabrics with prints on them in the past while. I found I had four pieces of thin fabric next to the cycle stuff (here). So in two nights/days of frantic cutting and sewing I created three additional shirts following the pattern from the cycle top. All these tops now have different necklines and hem treatments, one also has ‘shorter’ sleeves due to fabric shortage. Moreover, during this fascinating time, I discovered the handiness of spray starch for creating self made bias tape, which is used in many of the shirts.

The first is the dotted one. It’s white with small light grey dots. Four dots (that are printed pretty well on the bias) is the perfect width of neck-edge bias tape. This one has a scoop neck and a high-low hem. It’s all French seams again, but this iteration had the unfortunate luck to be the one where I forgot to trim the French seams before the second stitching, so some threads come out the side seam. I’ve decided that I don’t care enough to redo everything. You can see from the pictures that it’s quite sheer, which is why it is a good thing that I always wear a tank top under my clothes.

The second one was made from a narrow fabric with paint splatters. I had already made a scarf out of this in the past, so one of the edges already had a rolled hem. I figured, why not use this. This shirt has slightly less wide sleeves and the hem is shorter and straight. The neckline is straight at the bottom and then comes up at angles to connect to the rounded back. I can’t really explain it, the pictures lower down in the post should show the difference clearly.

Last but not least, the cat fabric. This fabric has little cats all over it, I think it’s cute. This one has a v-neck and a hem that is long on both the front and the back, but shorter at the sides. The fabric is not printed on grain, which made it difficult to get the neck to look ‘right’.

Now, as these shirts were all made shortly after each other, I could still picture them all together. Below you can clearly see the differences in necklines and hem treatments (if you look carefully).I liked making these, and I’ve found that I also like wearing them, which is a plus as I have four now.

One shirt only requires about half of the cuts of fabric that I have. This means that there is room for some other things that could be made from these fabrics. I’m curious to see what I will come up with…

Cycle Top

On Thursdays the market square is home to numerous stands with all kinds of different things, from cheese to fruit, from leather to bicycle stuff and from post-card crafting to fabric. You understand that I like the fabric stands best. There’s one that always sells coupons, cuts of about 1.5-2.0 meter in all kinds of different fabrics for between 3 and 10 euros a piece. A while ago I got home laden down with five of those pieces. One of these was a very light weight something, dark blue with white cyclists and walking people on them.

As it’s been almost continually raining for the past five or so days, it clearly was time to make myself the light weight summer top I’ve been dreaming of since the heatwave. I cut it out last night, loosely cutting around a blue knit shirt I made some time ago. Folded over the neckline twice, folded over the sleeve hems twice and stitched those. Then I French seamed the remaining bits and lastly I cut a semi-high-low-hem and folded that over twice and stitched as the hem. Yes, I am wearing my pyjama bottoms in the pictures. No, I have no shame.

The fabric was an absolute pain in the bottom to cut out as it was shifty as hell. I figured this out before when I tried cutting out a shirt from an actual pattern. I first spray starched the entire cloth, and now understand why one shouldn’t use it on floors as I currently slip and slide all across my living room… Sadly I was an idiot, and didn’t check twice before I cut, so that shirt is currently balled up with a front that is too short for me too wear. I will probably just attach a band along the front to solve the problem, but that’s for a later time. Especially as this fabric is also a hellion to sew, as things keep shifting. I needed something with the fewest pieces possible to keep my sanity yesterday and it worked! Now off to see if I also like wearing it.

Blue Stripes

In my opinion, there is no such thing as owning too many t-shirts (or sweaters for that matter). I have started to accumulate quite a bit of stretchy fabric that I think deserves to be made up into something. So the other night I decided that it was imperative that I trace by beloved t-shirt pattern, copied from an old shirt, onto something sturdier. I bought some wrapping paper that’s not as flimsy as my normal tissue paper and traced all the pieces onto it. I even cut out the two sleeves separately, as that should help with fabric usage and pattern placement.

I also attempted to scoop out the front armscyes a little. In order to test whether that adjustment had the intended result, I needed to make another t-shirt. I looked around through my box of knits and discovered a white, light blue and dark blue striped fabric that seemed perfect for the attempt. What I like most about striped fabric, is that you can aim at something to make it look good.

You can cut out neck binding, such that the stripe is nicely centered. When sewing side seams, you can try to match up the stripes as best as possible and that makes it look nicer. I think my attempt was pretty decent. I’m not sure if the arm adjustment worked fantastically, but the shirt still looks pretty good (in my opinion), so I’m happy with my pattern.

For this project, I also used a new to me technique/item. A stretch twin needle, to sew the hems and neckline. I think it looks really nice and if my aim is right, which sadly it isn’t always, the double line of stitching perfectly frames the blue stripe, see below. I think a need a bit more practice with this needle and hopefully I’ll be able to make nice stretch items with nice stretch hems from now on.

On to the next project!

Deadline Work (4) – Buttoned Shirt

Gala, Queen, Wedding, and larp, the most illustrious in that particular bunch. As you may know, I tend to want to make things for larp, mostly in the week before I have to leave, which may not be the best of planning decisions. However, this time this was the case again. In my productivity I managed to make a shirt, an apron and finally finish my backpack to satisfaction. All will be revealed in the coming posts, but first, the shirt!

So back in winter 2013 I discovered a pattern in a Simplicity magazine that I really liked for larp. It was a kind of peasant top with gathered neckline with the possibility to attach a yoke that closed with three buttons. I only took me 10 months to trace the pattern, so that’s almost a record.. I searched my stash high and low for some appropriate fabric and eventually found some of the most fluid, ravelling, presumably fake grey linen with black lines on the outside. Those lines weren’t really appropriate but the back was plain grey, the perfect plain grey for my top.

The Saturday of the cutting of this fantastic fabric was also the day I was scheduled for a very long first aid session at a film festival. I thought, correctly as it turned out, that nothing would happen at a film festival. So I had brought some of the fabric to make buttons, a tutorial of which I found here, quite a while ago. So I made myself a bunch of cute fabric buttons.

Back home, I cut the rest of the shirt, stitched it together, put it on and .. looked like a Michelin man. The arm holes almost came to my navel, but after some surgery I managed to take those in for a more comfortable fit. I finished the sleeves with cuffs that featured my buttons and the yoke too.

I hand sewed every stitch that would be visible on the outside, so the sleeve opening, the collarstand, the hem and the yoke facings. It was a nice detour from my usual machining.

I finished all the inside seams with the serger and used the serging to create the gathering at the yoke. I was too lazy to change the serger thread so it’s white with the light blue I used for my gala dress, this did make it a lot easier to find the right thread to pull.

While at the larp a got quite a few compliments that I didn’t even initiate (and some I did, sorry I was proud of this make). It is nice to hear that people like what you’ve made. This is the full view on me.

Back

Next up: the apron.

Productivity, 4.

I didn’t stop being useful after Saturday though. The fabric left over from the shirt I made over the course of the week, was enough for another shirt! I started with tracing a pattern for a button down shirt, but figured out that the fabric I wanted to use for it had not been washed yet. For fear of after-sewing shrinkage in the laundry, I decided to postpone that plan.

I had been planning on making another shirt out of my stripy fabric (here), and decided that that day was as good a day as ever. So I painstakingly cut out the pattern pieces, I used the same ones as the last time, on my desk. The living room table, which is much larger, had been taken over by someone else’s project. Sewed it together, same way as the other one, with the exception of using a zigzag on the hems and creating a different neckline. The back is the same but the front now sports a v-neck. I also like this one:

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I hope to continue this streak, although I don’t know if I will succeed. Wish me luck.

Productivity, 2.

So, I told you about the vests the other day. Are you ready for the second part of the productivity series? (If you’re not, sorry but here it is anyway)

The second part of the series revolves around my second make, a t-shirt. It was made of the stripy knit I bought a while ago (here). I had a t-shirt polo thing that I really liked the shape of, but it had ugly logo’s all over the place (it was free). So I took it apart and traced the pieces.

I cut out the 4(!) pieces on Tuesday. Sewed the shoulder seams and serged them, sewed the sleeves in the flat and serged them and sewed the side seams on Thursday. Figured out how to actually make my serger sew nice seams (and not ruffly things and weird superfluous thread everywhere) on Friday and serged the side seams. I hemmed the sleeves and the bottom and left the last bit to Saturday. Which was cutting out the neckline based on another shirt and sewing a strip along the neckline to finish it nicely.