The T-Shirt Hack

 My dear friend sent me this tshirt from Japan in a size large. Its a men's large. It fit me through the shoulders but the tummy area was bunched up and tight.

I needed a tshirt hack because I liked this color on me and it came from Japan!
So I started a Pinterest board. Pinterest helps me focus by being able to easily organize photo inspirations. The photos link back to where you found them, so if there is a tutorial, it's easy to find again by clicking on your saved photo.

I started a Pinterest board called Tshirt hacks and I latched onto the long vertical triangle of added lace under the arm to give  me room for my tummy.

Brown cotton lace - how hard could that be to find? If we were still in the late 70's - no problem. Here we are in the current year with only a few colors of cotton lace to be had.
Dyeing white to brown is more difficult than you know. Polyester lace would work for the look but is way too itchy.

I met up with Pencil Girl at Mill End Store in Beaverton, where we spent over an hour the year before to find some lace for her to try her tshirt overlay. It took just under an hour to find this camo knit instead.

I didn't mind a lace insert at the bra strap area because normally you aren't holding your arms above your head to flash people, although some people are more comfortable with flashing.
Also, the insert, right there at the bra strap area, would be pretty narrow. The point of the insert is a wider triangle at tummy and hips to allow for more room there.

Side seam insert.

Sleeve insert

It went in so easily. I decided to add a godet to the sleeves too. Godet - word of the day, pronounced Go-day. And it means a triangular piece of material inserted in a dress, shirt, or glove to make it flared or for ornamentation.


The side seam godet was for fitting better and the sleeve godet was purely for ornamentation.

Feeling pretty smug, I attacked the neckline too.

 Don't you love this color brown? Except it's not brown as we discovered in the fabric store, it's a dark olive. Anyhoo, like all dark colors, it's a beast to photograph clearly.

1. I cut along the side seam from the hem up to about 1 inch from the sleeve seam.

2. Knits don't fray, so I decided to just sew closely on the edge of my tshirt fabric onto the godet.

3. I placed my tshirt onto my ironing board and laid a 5 inch wide piece of the godet fabric underneath. Maybe 1/2" above my top cut but below the sleeve seam, extending down past the hem. We bought 1/2 yard of this material because of the way the camo pattern ran. 18" x 5".

4. I started pinning. Very close to the edge and just eyeballing that my triangular line was straight.

5. On the side with the serged commercial seam, I trimmed it off at this point, cutting close to the stitching.

6. My hint? Run your pins down one side in one direction and up the other side in the opposite direction. I sewed from the hem up to the sleeve seam on the right side, pulling pins out as I did.
However, when I came around the top, my pins were now backwards to being able to pull them out head first. So place your pins in opposite directions.

Bye, Bye, Care label

7.  I used a long stitch length - a basting length. There would not be any stretch going down but usually when you stitch on knits, making the length longer helps with the feed dogs and how the material feeds through. Almost forgot - I used a stretch needle too.

8.  I had some concerns my new seam would curl on the edges inside and make me crazy wearing it, so I stitched another line of stitching about 1/8" away and then later  trimmed the excess of my godet fabric close to that seam.

9. My godet width at the bottom of the hem ended up being 3 1/2" wide. I simply turned up my godet fabric a matching amount to my tshirt hem and sewed  it down using that same 4.0 stitch. Again, not a lot of stretch here. If you're concerned, you can get out your cover stitch and make a more commercial stretchy hem finish.

10. Finally, trim off your excess godet fabric.

You can see the double stitching here on the sleeve

On a roll, I decided to attack the neckline too. Guys t-shirts hit me at the neck making me crazy. I don't like things around my neck. 

I had pinned a hack showing how to turn a round neckline into a v-neckline. The technique said, and it's true, you can re-use the neckline binding up to 2 inches more stretch to make that deeper vee.

My machine design on the front of the shirt came close up on the neckline. I decided to keep the round shape but 1/2 - 3/4" lower.
And it worked. Remember, tshirt knit doesn't fray!

I snipped close to the binding from shoulder seam to shoulder seam (leave the back neck attached - just fooling around with the front side).

Then I folded my shirt in half, matching the shoulder points. I started cutting from the bottom about 1/2" - 3/4" down and just tapered my eyeball curve back to the original shoulder points. I might have been able to cut a little deeper except for  my design. (Don't cut that off...).

Then I wonder clipped my neckline back onto the binding right on top of the serged edge.
I matched the centerpoint of the shirt to the binding centerpoint and also about 3" up on both sides of that. The binding is smaller than the shirt so you have to stretch the binding as you sew.

I basted it on with a 5.0 stitch on my pfaff. Looked at it. Awesome. Then I took it to my serger which had to be re-threaded in a dark color. I used black as I don't own dark brown serger cones. And I re-serged that seam.

All of these hacks took less than an hour to do. Yes. An hour.

Time Flies on the logo

The hem is a little long and I might change that, but since I'm working overtime, I haven't had a chance to wear it yet. Trying it on - it fits! So much better.

The most difficult part of t shirt hacking is finding the right fabric to coordinate.

Thanks for the shirt, Janine!
The camo knit  matches so well, no one will be able to tell that I custom tailored it to my body.


***December 2016 update. This shirt is so soft. It was worth fussing around for an hour to make this fit me. None of the cut/sewn edges are curling, nor are they bugging me.

New T-Shirt

It's been a thousand degrees here in Oregon. I succumbed to the air conditioner and set up the fans so I could sew.

Rusty, our very old Lab, has been suffering, needing to pace at night, so what with the heat and not getting enough sleep, I started this shirt in the morning and finished it after my two movie snooze fest.

 The original tshirt was a Walmart wonder. I bought it online, sight unseen, because I needed five bucks more to get free shipping.

 I loved the blue 'camo' but it pilled asap and took on underarm odor after working in it on Saturdays. The blue ikat color was flattering to me. However, the neckline was a tad wide and I was always hiking it back up the shoulder bump.

The neck opening was cut nicely where I can show some chest but not have all my assets on view. I rarely sew t shirts from commercial sewing patterns as the necklines are either too high or way too low. This one was just right.

When it was  time to dispose of this shirt to the rag bin, I knew I wanted to draft a pattern. The body of the t-shirt extends past the shoulder bump and has cuffs folded back so your upper arms don't get burnt. It was also cut perfectly to skim over my lumps and bumps despite being a tissue-weight knit.

For the back side - which roughly matched the front side, I laid the shirt carefully on my Swedish tracing paper and traced around. All the seams are serged - as is most RTW (ready--to-wear) so I didn't need to add seam allowances.

For the front side, I cut up the side seams carefully and snipped through the under arm area. Then I flipped the back side out of the way to do my tracing.

Invariably, since knits stretch, you are going to skew up the tracing. Not too mention this item has been worn out and stretched. To make sure my neckline and sleeves and hem were 'even', I folded my tracing fabric pattern in half lengthwise and trimmed until both sides matched.

 The only 'alteration I did was to draw the neckline in a quarter of an inch so it wouldn't be as wide and show my bra straps.

You can barely make out my copious thought-notes on the tracing fabric. I may make this again and I will have forgotten any cool stuff when that time comes. Best to put it down on paper.


This is when I realized my knees hurt from the wood floor, My knees were sticking to the floor and my swedish tracing paper and I neglected to set up a fan here. 100 degrees. We Oregonians are puddles of whining and complaining. Off I went to the couch for a snooze fest.

 I bought this blue-grey tie-dye knit from Helsinki, Finland four years ago when we visited my host-families and friends and my husband re-united with lots of cousins.
 
 Eurokangas is a big department store with lots of fabrics. I have another thin knit with mini red stripes percolating in stash.

I had bought 1.3 meters which was just enough to get both front & back lengths top to bottom.
I had to trim off 1/2" from the back because it was that tight. Lots of scraps left over for neck binding and armhole banding plus numerous scraps to determine serger and coverstitch settings.

In fact, this is how I buy yardage without a pattern nearby. I can't fit both front and back sides next to each other. Thus, you need to lay out your pieces in tandem (Ha! airplane lingo  - one in front of the other). You need to buy from neckline to hem times two, which equals two lengths.
If there were a sleeve, then you would also add in a rough sleeve length to your calculated yardage.

 How cute are these sleeve cuffs? Just a band of fabric sewn to the 'armhole' then doubled back over and tacked in place.

Neckline bands are the second hardest part of sewing a t-shirt.

There is an art to getting it to be the right length and stretching it just right. The figure I have heard is 10% less than the neck opening. My neckline measured 31 inches. Thus, the band would be 3 inches shorter (3.1 to be exact).
 

Then you want the band to lie flat against your skin so most of the stretching would be in the front center and arcing around those curves and again on the back of the neck. My front wobbles a bit, meaning, I needed a bit more stretching right there. But hey, this is a t-shirt and I am not a perfectionist. Good to go.

The back neckline needed stabilizing and I had already sewn around once to top-stitch the band in place. Instead of using the selvedge of the knit, I used some small rickrack and sewed it down on the line of stitching I already had sewn.

One of the reasons to stabilize that back neck is because the shirt hangs from this area and this area will stretch out over time. I could have put clear elastic there but I thought it would be scratchier than the rickrack. I did use the clear elastic in the shoulder seams to stabilize there.

The most difficult part is hemming.

I'd already sewn everything else and knew this would be squirrely. While this knit is not a tissue-weight, its still thin.

I took some scraps and used some ultra-thin Stitch witchery (iron-on webbing) to see if i could stabilize this area without making it stiff. It seemed to work so I got the cover stitch  out - the machine that makes twin rows of stitching - like on all RTW clothing.

I haven't used my coverstitch in a long while so it might have been faster just to stitch the hem on my regular machine than the time it took to figure out the settings that would work on my chosen knit. Except, my regular machine would not be stretchy enough for the wear this shirt will receive.

I also used tissue paper strips underneath so my machine wouldn't grab the stretchy knit. Which helped a little. (Instead of tearing the strips off by hand, I threw this into the washing machine to dissolve the paper. Removing it by hand would have compromised my horrible coverstitch stitching)
I'm not particularly happy with how this hemmed. It skipped some stitching, tried to start gathering instead of moving forward evenly. I'm not sure how much the squirrely knit had to do with it and how much my machine knowledge needs tuning up. Pencil Girl? You better come over here....


A shout-out to Vacuuming The Lawn:
Most knits do not stretch evenly in all directions.  I had taken note when my blogging friend, Kyle, who is a wee bit of a perfectionist, said that the settings on her serger were different when stitching in the stretchy direction and the other direction with less stretch. This really helped with this squirrely knit.

I think the blue in the original shirt was more flattering. My freckles aren't vivid enough yet for this cooler blue.

Frizz-curls from working already this morning.

Knitting Girl

I had breakfast with a friend from high school Sunday morning.

We talked non-stop for three hours! The Donald Cafe had to shut us down.

Knitting Girl gave me these fingerless gloves that she hand knitted. How awesome is that?

Sewing Machine Fabric

I can't sew right now.

 My coworker's mom passed away and I've done 8 weeks of overtime plus mgmt's "you're a crap employee" talk twice now - once on overtime to the tune of $75 to listen (ha) to "blahblahblah" and don't even get me started about the heat that has stricken western Oregon.

Fortunately for me, I have air conditioning, so I can catch up on some blog reading. 

Kadiddlehopper is on my "C" list; blogs I like to keep an eye on to see if they continue being interesting. She made a t-shirt out of this knit. I fell into lust. I wanted this fabric. Beautiful blue background with lighter tone sewing machines and cute little hearts in the scissor borders.

I clicked the link which led to a UK shop, so I chased down a US seller,  and half-an-hour later, paypal'ed my own sewing machine knit fabric.

It came with a little note saying a swatch had been cut into the fabric and she sent *extra*.

 Knit from Lillestoff - out of Germany, I think. 
Very soft, very nice next to the skin.

I have a yard and a half to pet.

Estate Sale Bonanza

 A week ago, I went to an estate sale just out of town about three miles or so.
I hit the crafter's bonanza.

This top photo is three Hawaiian Prints (says so on the selvedge!) in beautiful rayon cotton. The fabric that drapes wonderfully.

The next photo is one of several lengths of Pendleton Wool. One is tagged Pendleton. These were all stored in a cedar chest. Lucky me. Cuz the rest of the fabrics were stored willy-nilly and I will have to double-check them for whatever lurks within.

Pendleton $6.00/yard!

 A buttload of zippers. 10 cents each or 'Let's Make A Deal'. I came back on Sunday (Half-price day) and found the rest of the zippers.

There were a lot of laces and trims but there were also a lot of musty mousiness. I left those.
A house, outbuildings, shop, barn. Filled with vintage loveliness.

 This pattern goes with the Hawaiian prints above. This is a well-known Muu-Muu designer.

 My co-worker and I both write a ton of letters. Fun critter-shaped letters. She loved these!

Vintage novelty prints.

 A stack of Hawaiian, Wools, pretty striped Swedish blue and yellow stripe.

 The orange and black is a stunning authentic batik.

 This is a Japanese style Tricot.
Yes, tricot knit. The kind you make slips out of.
I just love the colors and the japanese pictorial. Eagles, cranes, Swordfish, 60's mod water.

 What a fab haul.

I had an phone emergency last week. My barely three-month old phone slipped off the couch arm and hit the rug in just the right spot. The screen didn't break but the LCD thingy came loose and the screen is all wacky-doodle. I managed to retrieve these photos and thank god I had moved the Japan photos to my laptop a month ago.

I had finally got the new phone all set up just the way I wanted and BAM! -- dead in the water. It will cost too much to repair. I'm using the old Samsung S2 for now. My new blogging app - Blogaway - won't work on the older phone. I had gotten used to it's photo loading capabilities.

 Come to find out, a lot of the newer Samsungs: S4, S4 Mini (me), S5 all have this problem of not taking any guff. Reports of sticking it in your pocket causing the LCD to break loose, Hitting it against your keys in your purse, dropping just one time....

yeah.

I might switch to an I-Phone next time I  have spare money. Although, I will be selling the pendleton wool as well as all of the above estate goodies, so maybe some spare change will make its way to me by Christmas.

Catching up on some planned blog posts - three to go, -- now that I retrieved the photos off the S4 Mini by way of the Samsung Kies program.

I Sewed Yesterday

I did.
A brand new pair of pajama pants.
With pockets.


Unfortunately I work from dark to dark so there is only daylight at  my workplace.
---So not the place to take show & tell photos.

You will just have to wait.

They were made with a t-shirt knit  by Patty Young for Michael Miller.
The Heaven & Helsinki line.
Gardenia.
Blues & greens.
My favorite colors.

Incredibly soft knit.
It washes up softer.

The waistband is from a soft grey that I had in my stash,
The pockets are bound with the same.

I Sewed Myself A Top

It is very easy for me to get derailed from bigger projects by the allure of smaller projects.

Sewing clothing for myself is a big project. I might as well call it a huge project.
From determining the best size, to cutting out large pieces of fabric, to determining the best way to sew them with my Singer, my Serger, and/or the Coverstitch machine. A lot of thought goes into a garment.

I sat down yesterday and traced out the t-shirt with a 'U' shaped neckline from Ottobre 303.

This pattern is not for beginners although if you had someone telling you the order of tracing, cutting, and construction then, yes, of course, a beginner could make this t-shirt.

Last fall, I sat down and traced out the v-neck version of this tee and made a muslin out of some thin knit. I'm a size 16. Some knits drape well over the girls and the 'rolls' but other knits cling in all the wrong places.

My friend, Pencil Girl, and I met up last fall at the NW Quilting Expo and she found this fabric for me. I was suffering under the delusion that I had entirely too many knit fabrics and not enough pressure to sew them up. She held the fabric up to my face and it was a fantastic match for my hair and skin color.

This pattern, because you take multiple measurements, fit me with no alterations. The pattern sheet folds out into a bedsheet size and all the patterns pieces are a puzzle maze of lines. They are done in heavy lines so it is easy to take the swedish tracing paper and lay everything out on the kitchen island and puzzle trace out a pattern. -- if you know what the pattern piece might look like than it's that much easier - lol.

This time I used the "U" neckline. I had a vision of something I wanted to do for embellishment in my mind but found out after I made the tee that it would be too busy for this pretty fabric.

Sherril's Sewing saga. Beautiful Flower embellishment.

The Beautiful flower embellishment is gorgeous but maybe next time on a solid color. Sherril tells how to make the flowers here. Her other pattern reviews are here.

It's always nice to see a tee made up on somebody similar in size.

For the neckline, I used the binding pattern piece from the Ottobre 303 and divided it into quarters and pin-stretched it into place. I placed the right side of the binding against the right side of the neckline. I sewed with my reg. machine a 1/4" seam and then wrapped the binding up and over the neckline. I pinned it into place and also decided to hand-baste it to cut down on the number of pins coming into contact with my coverstitch machine. Then I sewed the band down from the front side of the garment - like top-stitching. This caught the back side of the binding.
I don't own any binders (neckline banding) yet, nor do I own the clear foot for the coverstitch. My stitching wanders a tad but only I would ever notice.

I made the sleeves 3/4 length. I have always run a little warm but this last year or two - when my auto-immune is kicking up, I get cold. I am always pushing long sleeves up so 3/4 is a good compromise.

This pattern has you hemming the sleeves right away but I waited until I attached them to the body pieces so I could see how much I needed to cut off. Which was nothing, surprisingly. Either I have longer arms than I thought or the long sleeves Ottobre drafted are short. They sit about 3 inches above my wrist which turned out perfect.

Side view with sleeve.

I used my coverstitch machine to hem the sleeves and the front and back sections before I sewed the side seam from the tip of the sleeve on down to the hem. My little problem is that I don't own enough cones of black thread yet to thread both my serger and the coverstitch. I did deviate a little from the instructions in order to keep from re-threading more than I had to. I think more thread cones will go on the birthday list (hint, hint).

This fabric is from some unknown vendor and it was labeled as 1 1/2 yds @10.95 ($16.40), 60"  wide , Slinky Acetate.

Beautiful colors, gorgeous drape. This tee is on me as I write this.

I am so pleased with how this material worked for me.
It was fairly easy to sew with no curling and only a smidge of slippage.

I love how this Ottobre pattern fits me as well. The vee-neck  muslin that I sewed  - the vee is a little on the high side but that's easy to adjust on the pattern piece. The "U" neckline is perfect for me. It sits just above the cleavage.
Ottobre also drafted the pattern so the front side seam is longer than the back. This is so you can baste some ease where the girls sit.  This is a great fitting sewing pattern for women.