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Tuesday 22 April 2014

Stripey Slouchy Tee

Here she is.  Slouchy Tee number two.


This one took me a hell of a lot longer than the spotty version.  First of all I cut the first piece with the stripes in the wrong direction, argh!  Then I just couldn't get the neck right.  Technically it should have been cut on the bias but the stretch was none existent, the fabric was super stretchy (like super stretchy!!) in the horizontal direction of the stripe.


Anyhow, I did manage far less tucks around the neck this time (woo- high five!) and I even put the seam for the neck running adjacent to the shoulder seam (that big seam on the spotty slouchy tee neck was just driving me crazy!)


Looks so much better (although the mis-matched stripe and tuck on the neck will bug me, but hey!).

Check out the pattern matching - what - where's that seam you ask...oh yeah, sewn like a boss!




So to get these sleeves I took what I had learnt from sewing the Archer shirts, why bother with all that faffy sleeve ease when you could simply attach the sleeve in one straight piece like this... 


Then simply fold back over and pin right side to right side at the seams and sew as one big lot, side and sleeve together, easy peasy! No fiddling about with trying to make the sleeve band fit into the sleeve hole!

I have also been trying out various ways of finishing the overlocked seam.  I tried this...


Make sure there is plenty of overlocked stitch available before lining up the seam then pull the loose stitching under the foot.  Make sure it's pulled fairly tightly and lined up to be stitched over and this will secure the starting stitches.  To finish the stitches I used a large eyed needle and by hand pulled the loose stitches back through the existing stitches to secure it.




You can see this here.  This was my first attempted hence the bulk at the end but after practise I had this nailed!

Fabric: Guthrie-Ghani cotton jersey

Tuesday 15 April 2014

Slouchy Tee

Here comes the sun...

Here's my first ever T-Shirt ready for the summer.  In true Sewing Sarah style I'm going to make an army of these.  I find that I'm only getting near to happy with my results after a good few attempts with the same pattern.  I learn as I'm going along.


I got the free pattern from icandy's self drafted pdf (someone on twitter recommended this for me- so sorry I've lost the tweet to give you a name check and I've a terrible memory!).  Hers is designed for a shoulder insert but I didn't want this so just stuck the shoulder inserts to the front to make a full front pattern piece and hey presto!


I love the cute little sleeve bands.  Ignore the mis-matching dots, hey it's a slouchy tee after all!  My priority was in getting that slippy jersey nailed not perfect pattern matching.


I cut the neck band on the bias as apparently that gives a little more stretch.  The neck band is always cut shorter and stretched to fit when sewn in.  I was terrified of overstretching it but I think it worked out ok.  There are a few little tucks around the back and front right but for my first attempt I'm pretty pleased!


I overlocked/serged everything, everything!  I wanted to do a faux cover stitch hem but opted for a stretch stitch instead.  I'm learning so much about my overlocker.  Can you believe I've only just realised you can opt not to have the knife cutting! *note to self-read the instruction book!*