Tag: T-shirt

Cheshire Tops

Making two different cat face shirts.

While stalking the local market recently, I discovered a jersey with Cheshire Cat faces on it. It was love at first sight and the length went home with me. It then languished in the hoard for a fair few weeks before I got up the energy to make a thing. One of my tried and true t-shirt drafts got picked first because I just wanted to have a cat eye shirt in rotation. My serger was being good and actually worked for the entirety of this project, so that made it a very quick sew. Not much more to say, I’ve got a fair few of these types of shirt in the cupboard and they all get a lot of wear.

After finishing that first top however, I had so much fabric left over that I started considering what to do with it. My penchant of keeping random short bits of fabric in the hoard means that I never seem to fully use up a fabric and I wanted to try and change that. I’d been thinking about bat wing tops for a while at that point as I’m planning on making one for my mother (have not completed that yet). So I looked for a pattern and settled on the Amy Bat Wing Top. Printed out the size small and tried to fit it on the fabric. That didn’t go exactly to plan so I cut the back in a top and bottom and reduced the length of the sleeves a little. Instead of hemming, I added a band along the bottom, similar to the arm bands. The neckline is also banded instead of made with facings.

When I first put it on, I couldn’t figure out if I liked it or not. The sleeves are approximately elbow length, which is not something I generally enjoy. The shape is also completely different to anything I normally wear. However, after living in it for a few days I decided that it was quite nice. I’m just not entirely sure if this will see much wear. There is a lot of fabric but short-ish sleeves so it won’t fit under a sweater but will it suit hot(ter) weather or not? Future will tell if it will escape the cupboard regularly.

Dinosaur Shirt and Scarves

Who loves to wear dinosaurs, helicopters, surf boards, planes and sharks on their body? Me!

Summer Graduation 2020 feels like a lifetime ago in some ways and the blink of an eye in others. During the set-up for that ceremony, we were still able to go out and enjoy the market with its fish and its fabric stalls. While waiting for my colleagues to buy their fish, I perused the fabric stall and soon found the fabric that I just NEEDED to buy. People, it had dinosaurs and helicopters on it and was a jersey, the perfect new t-shirt!

  • Dinosaurs, helicopters, surf boards, planes and sharks, what’s not to love?!
  • Scarf!

While at that market, one of my colleagues remarked that she would be interested in a scarf with the dinosaurs, so at the end of 2020 I set out to making this dream (and/or throw away comment) come true. The scarves, I made two, are just simple infinity scarves, very quick and easy to sew and done within the day. So why did it take me so long to write up this post, you may ask? Well, her birthday was end of January so I waited to gift it until then and second, I’m lazy.

  • Front
  • Back
  • Side seam

Next to the scarves, I also made a t-shirt. This one was made with my tried and true Free Fun Summer Tee pattern (exhibits A and B). I tried to match the stripes along the side seams and that seems to have turned out pretty well. The hems do curl up a little, but that’s probably got something to with some stitching errors I made. All in all, I’ve just got a tiny bit of this fabric left and finished three projects in a day. Success!

Spiders and Dinosaurs

I made even more shirts from the free fun summer tee pattern. These ones were cut from jersey fitted sheets. I got a blue one and a white one. The pattern has shoulder seams that are far towards the front. Since the white fabric wasn’t very long, I only managed to get two fronts out of it. I then determined what the shape of the shoulder piece needed to be and cut that out of the blue.

Once the actual sewing was finished, I couldn’t figure out which side was the front. Then I had the bright idea to add some embroidery to the front. So I looked through my pinterest boards for some inspiration. I’d already decided to do a lace-collar-spider thing, but on blue, so that wasn’t an option. So, dinosaurs it was. I pinterested a lot and couldn’t find something that I totally liked, but I used this as my inspiration to draw something myself. It’s a little sitting dinosaur that is looking up to the sky. This shirt has been worn quite a lot so far. It’s very cute.

I also cut the complete shirt from the blue fabric. Then I went in search of the perfect lace to fake a spiderweb. I found some in Amsterdam that I bought, but then I went to a local shop for something else and thought that I might just take a look. There I found the perfect lace. This lace was sewn partly around the neckline and then covered by the neckline binding.

Throughout an episode of Blown Away (Netflix show about glassblowing), the lace was handsewn down. At the end of the lace, a bit of embroidery was added to mimic a spider. I think this one is very fun. It’s also been worn regularly already.

Fun Summer Tees

I’ve been throwing out a number of t-shirts due to stains etc, and therefore decided I needed some more tops. I’d also discovered an interesting free shirt pattern on pinterest that I wanted to try out. So a match made in heaven, right? (Actually, it was.)

The pattern I used was the ‘fun summer tee’ pattern by iCandy handmade. It only came in one size, M, so I grabbed some weird jersey stuff that I think I may have made something out before, but I cannot remember what. I cut out the pattern as it was and sewed it up. I liked the pattern, but it needed some adjustment to make it a perfect top for me. It was a little big, I didn’t sew the armhole shut enough and it was too long. It’s since been gifted to a friend.

So in the same afternoon, I started a new version. This one used leftover fabric from the flower-power-pantsuit and some black mesh that was destined for some form of sportswear.

I decreased the width of the shirt by a few centimeters and decreased the length too. Since the flowers were a limited width, I only cut the middle of the front out of that. The sides and back were cut from the mesh. Sewed together and added a neckband from a strip of the flower stuff. The corners are mitered which is a much better finish.

It’s been worn a lot, I really like it. It doesn’t go with my thin skorts so I will need to remedy that in the future.

The Day of Three Shirts (part 3)

So the last shirt of Wednesday was I shirt pattern that had come in my possession after some extensive google translating. The pattern is 0880 from Papavero, Krawiecka bluzka błyskawiczna. I’ve had an account at Papavero for quite a long time, and in the past most of their patterns were free (yay!). Nowadays, they charge for downloading a pattern, so I needed to get my grabby little fingers on some Papavero credits. Queue me attempting, for the first time ever, to do a ‘world transfer’ from my bank account while google translating the instructions from Papavero and carefully attempting to pay 49 Polish Zloty. Two days later, it turned out that I was successful and I managed to buy this pattern and a few others, but you’ll hear about those once I start/finish the projects associated.

After what felt like forever trying to place the pattern pieces with as little owl-edge as possible, I succeeded. There are a few left over leaves in the side seams from the back pieces, but because I chose to use the wrong side of the fabric, this is barely noticeable. The remaining owls are going in the bin and this is another completed fabric. As for the project, I first sewed the sleeve hems, neckline edges and hems with the twin needle, and then I switched to a jersey needle for the actual sewing. I sort of tried to use the instructions, but in the end managed to wing it based on the pattern pieces and notches themselves.

The fabric isn’t really stretchy, so I’m hoping the neckline edge will shrink a little in the wash, although it is fine as is. I’m generally always impressed with the way the notches on Papavero patterns line up, and this thing fits pretty true to size, I think. Papavero publishes their patterns in a range of sizes, first height (I chose 156, I am 158), then size (I chose 36), then cup size (I chose X). The only small gripe I have is that the sleeves are fairly tight and I’m not sure how to keep the overlap from gapping, but I might just sew a few stitches to get that solved.

That was the end of the (epic) Three Shirt Day series, on to the next thing!

The Day of Three Shirts (part 2)

After finishing the first shirt, I wanted to finally tackle some Owl fabric I’ve had in the hoard since.. a long time. It was a bit of grey knit, with four framed owls on it. This meant that some fabric would need to be wasted in order to get an owl centered on any garment. If I would turn the fabric around, the back would still show a little of the owls through, so I couldn’t really just use the wrong side either.

After some careful placement, I did manage to get the front cut out. At that point, I’d already decided that wanted to try and cut another shirt from the leftovers on the grey only. This meant that it took me at least an hour of putting down pattern pieces and picking them back up and putting them somewhere else to get what I wanted. In the end, I decided that I wanted to have another owl centered on the back of the first shirt so that was that. I hemmed the sleeves, neckline, and bottom (and the edges of the other shirt) before changing needles and sewing the shoulder seams and side seams. If the placement would have been easier, this would have been a very speedy project. On to the third part!

The Day of Three Shirts (part 1)

So, today started of snotty – I have a cold, during my vacation – but I managed to get myself into action. I’d started planning a shirt yesterday night but I couldn’t get my brain around the limited amount of fabric. This morning, I started again. Initially I was debating between the shirt pattern with attached sleeves and the one with separate sleeves. After trying to fit them on the small piece of fabric I had left, it had to be the one with separate sleeves. I even had to shorten those to a previously used shorten line because they wouldn’t fit otherwise.

The fabric I used, was left over from the Forgotten Graduation Dress. After ironing the fabric flat again to get the most advantageous pattern placement, I cut out the pieces. The bottoms were not even, but I figured that I would find a solution for that at some other point in the process. I’ve now decided that whatever leftovers there were, they are destined for the bin. One more fabric ‘completed’.

I hemmed the sleeves first with a twin-needle, then sewed the shoulder seams. Next came the sleeves and then the sleeve and side seams in one fell swoop. I found a piece of fabric that was just long enough to bind the neckline edge. Lastly, I decided that I mostly liked the shape of the hem, the back was straight with a small diagonal edge and the front was completely at an angle with a bit of fabric added at the shortest side. I cut of the weird extra bit, which effectively made the shirt’s front and back on that side the same length. Yay, for happy accidents. Hemmed the bottom with the twin needle and called it a day! Or no, I decided to tackle the other difficult placement problem fabric I had in the hoard too. You’ll see about that later!