Seahorse Shirt Hand Stitched in Cotton Jersey

I enlarged one of Marty Kenney’s doodles of a seahorse to make a stencil and then hand stitched this appliqué. This became the sleeve of a cotton t-shirt.

I had originally embroidered the seahorse to a front panel. No matter how I looked at it, the placement was unflattering. So the piece sat unfinished for eight months until I decided to move the embroidery to the sleeve. That’s why it has extra seams.

I designed the rest of the shirt to go with the seahorse. I wanted the seahorse to be the focus, the most detailed part, with the rest of the shirt simple, but not plain. After much thought and deliberation, I decided to add a trim to the rest of the t-shirt. Here you can seek all of the trim on the front, back, and second sleeve. A little appliqué like this is not only decorative, but also serves a purpose. It keeps the edge from rolling too much. I learned these sewing techniques from the books of Alabama Chanin.



Stitch, stitch, stitch...



Next I assembled the pieces. The finish on the neckline is my own invention. Learn to sew the neckline here: https://gwenbeads.blogspot.com/2019/12/t-shirt-with-stretchy-noodle-binding-on.html

Since there’s no tag, I like stitching a little doodad at the top back. That way, when I pick it up, it’s easy to tell which side is the front..

Here’s the doodad.
 

Notice the parallel whip stitch where the sleeve connects to the bodice. I use whip stitch for the sewing and top stitching on that seam to make it stretchy. It’s a lot more comfortable for me when it’s stretchy there.

3/4 sleeve. Long enough to cover most of my butt. Deep neckline.

 I’m going to get a lot of wear out of this come spring. 

Thanks for looking!

T-shirt with Stretchy Noodle Binding on Cotton Jersey

I finished sewing a T-shirt for my sweetie for his holiday present. It’s hard to buy him gifts, but he always wears the T-shirts I make him. This shirt is entirely hand stitched in cotton jersey, using techniques I learned from the books by Alabama Chanin.

My sweetie like AV equipment and electronics. So I made this stencil just for him. I appliquéd the design with backstitch.

Here, I used my original binding technique with a jersey noodle. This is the second shirt I’ve made with this edge treatment, and I really like it.

I cut the strips of cotton jersey 1.25” wide before stretching them into noodles. Then I appliquéd the noodle to the edges in two passes as I show in the drawings here.

It’s easy to do this binding on the neckline because you don’t have to ease it like you do with Alabama Chanin’s folded binding, which I find to be a particularly difficult task to do on curved necklines. The fold-over step with the noodle automatically makes the noodle shorter than the finished neckline, making it just the right tightness. Here you can see the fold-over step half done.

So the finished neckline is taught and stretchy. Next time, on the sleeve ends, I’ll ease the noodle a little (with a shorter noodle) because I think it belled a little, and a little taper there at the ends of the sleeves would have been better and could have been solved with some easing.

Thanks for looking. Happy holidays!

Cotton Jersey Coat Hand Sewn

This is my new cotton jersey coat, entirely hand stitched with polyester thread, using the techniques I learned from the books by Alabama Chanin. And pockets! It’s got pockets!

I used the pocket technique described here, but with piping instead of a ruffle.  http://www.fromthesehands.net/tutorials/tag/alabama-chanin

A few stitches here, a few stitches there, and eventually all the details are done. I love this process.

I’ve been working up to this project for a while now. I’ve been altering a long sleeved shirt pattern every time I make one. With a few more tweaks to the pattern, it’ll be a perfect fit. It’s still a little tight over the bust.

For the lining, I had  enough fabric in either orange or gray. I bought way too much of that orange, and I had to use it somewhere.

I’m so excited to finish this coat because this means I now have a pattern for a fully embellished one.


Here's a photo of my dog.

Thanks for looking.

Green Corset Top with Sequins

This corset top uses the techniques I learned from the books by Alabama Chanin, although the pattern is modified quite a bit from the pattern I found in her book.

A friend of mine gifted me this crazy green fabric. It's probably polyester.  Since it's somewhat transparent, and I don't like polyester next to my skin, I flat lined the whole thing in cotton jersey.

These were my tests to help decide how to stitch the binding with sequins and stretchy stitches.  As you can see in the finished photo above, I did something a little different from any of these. Still, making the samples helped. I chose to use the transparent sequins on the green binding because I didn't want to use sequins under my arm pits because sequins can be scratchy, and I didn't want it to be obvious that the sequins are omitted there.

 Here's a photo of my dog.

 Thanks for looking.

Cotton Jersey Tunic with Reverse Applique

 If you're looking for me, I'll be in here.

This tunic top uses the techniques I learned from the books by Alabama Chanin.

One thing I do differently from Chanin is I use stretchy stitches on the arm holes (armscyes). It’s more work than straight stitches, but oh, so much more comfortable! I’m totally doing the stretchy stitches around the armscyes from now on.

Here's a photo of my dog. Sometimes I call him Smooshface.

Thanks for looking.

Atomic Shirt for a Man

I finally found something nice to make for my sweetie that he can use. This shirt is two layers of pure cotton jersey, stenciled with acrylic paint, and hand stitched with polyester thread. He requested an atomic symbol, like the one for the Springfield Isotopes baseball team on The Simpsons.

To make the shirt pattern, I cut up his old favorite t-shirt, traced it onto pattern paper, and added seam allowances. Then I made a rough draft t-shirt to test the pattern and used it to make a few small adjustments to the pattern. Then I cut this garment, which I consider a final copy. It should be a perfect fit. After trying to use other people's patterns and drafting my own, I have to say that starting with well loved garment is an excellent way to draft a perfect pattern that fits, and if you are willing to cut it up, you get to the right pattern easily without too many alterations.

Here is the rough draft shirt I made first to test the pattern before spending a lot of time on fancy embroidery.

The fabric had a flaw that I didn't catch until the shirt was sewn together.  So I added a star on the back to cover it up. 

Here is my sweetie's favorite cotton t-shirt (left), all worn out and sad. In blue on the right, you can see my new version. I changed the number because I cut a stencil and I didn't want to deal with the holes in the 8. Fortunately, he didn't care.

I learned the techniques for construction and embellishment from the books by Natalie Chanin. Her work is such an inspiration.

Tunic Shirts with Reverse Applique on Jersey Inspired by Alabama Chanin

Back in June, I promised you more clothing made with reverse applique on jersey fabric. Well, today is the day. This is my most recent piece, a short sleeved, tunic top in cotton jersey. I learned the techniques from #AlabamaChanin. Stencil design was originally designed by Zelda Lin for the Genie Bottle.

The fabric is on the thinner side for cotton jersey, but not transparent. With two layers, it makes a nice weight for a shirt.

  

I spent many weeks of my free time to make this piece, and I really enjoyed the process. Doing running stitch is very meditative and easy to do even if you're tired. 

I like the way it looks a lot. However, I altered the back pattern piece to remove some gaping at the back neckline and now it's a little tight in the armpits. I can snips some threads and resew the seams to fix that, I hope.  This piece has a lot of detail covering the entire surface.  I probably won't do another piece again with this much detail. 

It has about 300 yards of thread, all worked doubled in hand stitches. That's 150 yards of running stitch and a bit of Cretan stitch on the neckline.

Here are some process photos. This photo shows the three pattern pieces: Front, back and short sleeve. The front and back are both two pieces. The fabric is cut and stenciled with spray paint fabric paint. I used Tulip Color Shot Instant Fabric Color in purple. I needed two 3 oz. cans to stencil all of the pieces, but didn't finish the second can.

Here is what the fabric looked like after stitching but before cutting. I put the knots on the outside to emphasize that it's hand made. It's also more comfortable to have the knots on the outside where they aren't right next to your skin.

Next are several photos of another shirt I made using the same techniques. This long sleeved tunic is made out of Modal jersey, which is a type of rayon made from beech trees. To say it's rayon means it is semi synthetic cellulose fiber. It is very soft and springy, much more springy than cotton. You could probably shoot this shirt across the room like a slingshot, but I haven't tried it yet. 

This is my dress form, Marge wearing the top. This jersey fabric is a thicker weight from the cotton above, making this a warm and cozy shirt that is both comfortable and fancy. Its weight and spring help it to drape nicely. I'm looking forward to wearing it a lot this winter.

 Here is a process photo of the cutwork. 

I thought the design needed some more density, so I added the blue stitching you can see below.  This is the back left shoulder.

I end with a heart to offer you my appreciating for making it this far.  This photo shows the center front of one of my very favorite shirts with black and taupe jersey and big patches of floral embroidery (not shown). 

I got an oil stain right on the center front of this favorite shirt of mine. So here's how I fixed it. This is reverse applique with red cotton jersey and two rows of running stitch. Good as new. Have a great day. Thanks for looking.

Learning from Alabama Chanin - Red Hearts on Gray Tunic Top

I bought a couple books last summer at the local Barnes & Nobles.  When I sat myself down in the crafts section, as I like to do from time to time, I found two books by Natalie Chanin on hand sewing clothing.  One is titled, "Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A guide to Hand-Sewing and Alabama Chanin Wardrobe." The newer book is "Alabama Studio Sewing Patterns: A Guide to Customizing a Hand Stitched Alabama Chanin Wardrobe."

This is the back of a tunic top.

Now that I've had the books for a full year, I've gotten a chance to read them thoroughly as well as make a few pieces from them, including the one in this blog post. This fitted tunic top is a slightly altered version of the pattern in the books.  It is upcycled from 3 different t-shirts. The stitching is in black and red with four "random ruffles" running down the front.

Front

 Shoulder close up

Here are some close up shots that show the detailed hand stitching. The seams are all sewn twice for strength and style.  It has inside felled seams where I sewed the light gray to the dark gray. Because I upcycled from other shirts, I had to patch together the fabric to make this top.  So there are more seams inside the dark and light areas. Outside felled seams connect the dark gray to itself, and the light gray is patched together using outside open seams with feather top-stitching. By the time I got the front and back cut out, there wasn't enough fabric left to make the binding, so I cut into a third shirt, the red one.  The red binding is attached with a stretchy stitch, called Cretin stitch, to keep the arm holes and neck line stretchy. Since I had so much red fabric left over, I thought I'd add some applique, and hearts seemed like the obvious choice.

As is characteristic of Chanin's style, the bottom edge is left unstitched. Also, characteristic of her style are the hand appliqued bits attached with running stitch and an unfinished cut edge.

One important tip that is omitted from the books is that you have to ease the binding anywhere you use it.  This means that the binding is a bit shorter than the edges it binds.  If you don't ease, you will find that the arm holes and neckline gape in an unattractive way. (Ask me how I know.) Figuring out how much to ease the binding is a bit of an art, but I find that I use as much ease as I can without creating ripples. Even a tiny bit of ripple is okay.  I found that it's better to slightly over do it than to slightly under do it, especially since these tops tend to be fitted, which leads me to another observation...

I think the pattern sizing in this book is too small.  I've found that anything I make from these books in a large size tends to be a tight on me, and I'm 5'5" and 130 pounds. I am a US Size 8 or maybe 10. In fact, according to the designs I've made from these books, I'm consistently an "extra large," which bothers me a bit since I'm not a particularly large woman.

Other than that, I really love the designs and techniques in these books. If you like hand stitching and making clothing, I totally recommend these books to you. I love the combo of soft jersey and fancy stitching.  The clothing I have produced is both beautiful and comfortable, and I'm offering much of what I make for sale, including the top in this blog post.  I made a couple more tops that I still need to photograph.  So expect more from me soon.

Thanks for looking.