2 piece t-shirt

Lately I'd begun to notice that my summer t-shirts were looking pretty shabby. You know, faded, stretched and generally crappy. But I guess that's what happens when you've hardly ventured into a clothes shop in the past 6 years (my big girl is 6). Dragging between 1 and 3 small children through crowded shops is not my idea of fun. For me or them. And in my precious time alone I don't want to be looking at my post pregnancy/breast feeding wobbly bits in brightly lit changing rooms! Plus it's expensive. And often bad quality. I could go on, but you get the picture. Do you feel the same? Or is shopping still fun for you (or was it ever)?

Anyway, I digress... Looking at all the lovely flowy jersey t-shirts around got me thinking about how I love simple shapes and hey, it probably wouldn't be too hard to make one. So I started with Tessuti's 'fave top' pattern (free!) as a basis. I knew I'd have to change it, but boy it looked awful on me. It was probably because my black & white striped knit fabric from my stash was too thick, but it just draped terribly and looked wrong. It consisted of just 2 pieces of fabric, no set in sleeves to deal with, and I liked that and thought it was something I could work with. So I got in and hacked it up, sewed new seems, hacked it up a bit more, sewed a bit more etc til I was happy with the basic shape.

For the hems I turned the edge over twice and sewed a straightstitch. Then, as it was looking a bit plain (and not drapey at all) I added a little pocket to the front (making it 3 pieces, technically). Then some elastic to the edges of the sleeves to give them a bit of shape (the same way I did it here).

Then the hem didn't look quite right so it got the elastic treatment too. As you can see its pretty rough, but I do like the bit of shape it adds and the visual link back to the sleeves makes me happy in a sewing-nerd kinda way.

So there you go, a bit of creativity with the scissors and sewing machine. I highly recommend it over jostling with teenagers and loud music while trailing tantruming toddlers and preschoolers behind ;-)

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In other sewing news my Minoru jacket is underway and I'm sooo enjoying it, trying not to stay up really late each night sewing. It's so tempting though!