Friday, September 23, 2011

Make a T-Shirt and Make it Pretty

Blog-land has been my inspiration. This project was a combination of two ideas. First of all, use an existing shirt to create a new shirt. Secondly, make cute embellishments from scraps.

First of all the shirt:
Not the cleanest or the prettiest job, but it proved to me that it could be done.

Using one of Kewpie's existing shirts, I turned it inside out and folded it in half. I traced that onto my fabric. I traced it in such a way that I had a back piece and a front piece. I used the same shirt to trace the sleeve. Then I sewed the shoulders together, sewed the tops of the sleeves in, and then sewed up the sides.

The neck is what I really don't like. I've made a few shirts since then, and I'm gradually getting better at the necklines in knits.

The instructions for a neckline are to take the ribbing, and right sides together, sew it around the neck. Then flip it around to the back and sew it on. What I didn't do then, but know about now, is that you're supposed to stretch the ribbing around the neck as you're sewing it. Because the ribbing is smaller than the neck, the neck doesn't look all stretched out. Didn't know that then.

I used a zig-zag to accommodate for stretch, but I think the zig-zag looks home-made. Someone I read about recently mentioned the necessity of using double needles with knits, and it sounds like this would solve my problem. I'll let you know when I try it out.

So here I was with this T-shirt I'd put effort into, and then neck looked terribly stretched out. So I turned to embellishments. Thanks to Delia Creates' tutorial, I figured out how to make roses out of fabric scraps. I sewed a few of them onto the front of the shirt by hand.

I feel like it turned out a lot better than it could have. Stay tuned for more T-shirt stuff. I keep trying and learning how to make T-shirts.

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