You Bug Me

So what do you do with one yard of silk in your stash? Lingerie? A tank top?   Drape it over your head and sashay around the house calling everyone Darrrrlink?

Well if it's 60" wide you can just squeeze out a Grainline Studio's Scout Tee.  All you need is some scrap fabric laying around, nude silk maybe, to use for the bias binding. 

Confession, I blow at bias bindings.  Jen's tutorial is supper helpful, but if you are an inaccurate cutter and sewer then you really can't expect professional results. There's a reason there are two lines of stitching around the neckline.  It's called my bias binding is all different widths and I wasn't even drinking!

I do try to be accurate but that part of my brain appears to be annexed into remembering song lyrics.  Appearently remembering all the words to 867-5309 is more important than consistant 1/2" seam allowances. (Jenny I got your number, I'm gonna make you minnne,  Jenny don't change your number, 8675309.)

Now if you're gonna make a shirt with a semi-large bug print on it people are either gonna love it or hate it.  My own husband said to our child, "EWWWW  Mommy's covered in Stink Bugs!!'   Don't be silly, stink bugs are brown not fabulous colors like my bugs.....Darrrrlink.

This is my second Scout Tee so pop over here to see what changes I made to the pattern. (Darts darrrrlink) 
In closing I give you this.

Me-Made-May Day 11 - What's in my scoop pocket precious?

Guess what, I've finally finished something new!  It's the Scoop Top from the skirtastop blog....but what's that in my pocket? Is it a chicken?

Maybe it's a crab.

Uh Oh, that monster has a wrench.

Pattern
Scoop Top a free pattern from http://skirtastop.com.  It only comes in a medium size but I'll show you how I made mine a large.

Fabrics used
A thin jersey roll end I got from Hotpattern's Esty shop, sometime last year or maybe the one before that.

Pattern changes/alterations 
Despite earning a Fashion Design degree I know almost nothing about grading, so this is my "just winging it" method. Those of you who do a lot of FBA's will notice that's pretty much what this is.  I did this set of changes to both the front and the back of the pattern. My measurements are 37" Bust  34" Waist and 42" Hip.

1. Starting with the front pattern piece, draw a vertical line through the entire length of the pattern, I put mine about 2" away from the neckline.  Cut the pattern in half along this line and then tape in some extra paper to the CF side. I added an 1"of extra width to the pattern so draw a parallel line to your slash line (Translation - the line you cut on) and 1" away on the added paper.

2. Go to the shoulder seam line and draw in the shoulder seam continuing with the existing angle.  Tape the other side of your pattern 1" away but following the shoulder angle.  This will make your hem line uneven, that's OK cause we'll take care of that later.  Repeat these last two steps on the back pattern.

3. I felt the diameter and length of the kimono sleeve need to be larger.  To do this tape extra paper to the sleeve hem area and trace out an extra 1/2" on both the hem and the underarm area.  Blend the new underarm curve into the side seam. Repeat this sleeve alteration to the back pattern.

4. Now it's time to fix up the hem area.  Up to this point the front and back adjustments have been the same amounts, but that is going to change in the hem area.  Probably because of boobs and personal hem preferences I decided to add 2 3/4" additional length to the front and only 1" additional length to the back.
First make sure your front and back side side seams match and make any adjustments there.   On the front piece square down 2 3/4" on the CF (Translation - measure down 2 3/4" on the center front at a right angle. See you're keeping things "square.")

 Now draw a nice shirt tail like hem curve up to the side seam edge.   On the back square down 1" and then draw in the hem curve to the side seam.

5.  With big boobs come big responsibilities.... I mean big pockets.  This is a personal preference change, if you like small pockets floating on your bust line by all means go with that. I personally think it looks like a tiny life raft lost at sea.  All this is a long way of saying I added 3/4" extra width and 1" extra depth to the pocket.

Non size related changes I made were moving the entire shoulder seam 1/2 forward for my forward shoulders and a 1" swayback adjustment.

Confessions/Advice
1. Make sure to use a light weight jersey or something that has plenty of drape for this pattern.  Otherwise all that hip ease is gonna make you look like you're wearing a smock.  There's an cotton interlock muslin of this pattern so I know from experiance.

2. A light weight rolly edged jersey does make neckband insertion challenging.  This would be a great time to baste the two edges of the neckband together before trying to sew it onto the neckline.

3. If you have a coverstitch machine you can skip using interfacing on the hem, I had no problem with wavy hemlines.

4. Sewing a knit pocket onto your knit T-shirt on the regular sewing machine will always make you want to stab random people.  Maybe have a shot of alcohol to keep family interactions on the up and up.

Husband Comment
"Hey that's a nice color and you got the pocket on straight.  Are you gonna put stuff in your pocket?"  (He didn't know about the photos yet.)

My Final Thoughts
I was actually thinking about drafting a top similar to this and was super excited that one already existed.  Guess lately I've not been in the mood to draft from scratch so altering "seems" easier.
The shirt is very comfy for lounging around the house or running after crazed toddlers.  I really like the shirt tail hem and the kimono sleeves.  I was able to get this shirt out of a yard of 58" wide jersey, which means it's costs hardly anything to make.  (Used stash but you know I'm always looking at other fabrics on-line.....ALL THE FABRICS!)

A Trio of Tees

After such a labor intensive project as Butterick 5814, it's no surprise that I decided to return to the gigantic knit stash for a quick fix.  To make things really easy I pulled out my favorite TNT pattern, Sewaholic's Renfrew.  This is the V-neck long sleeve view, made up in a very nondrapy rayon knit. 

Kind of nautical right, so the Lobster makes total sense. Just nod politely.

But Renfrews are like potato chips, you can't make just one so I dug deeper into the stash and found this awesome rayon tweedy knit. It just screamed cowl neck Renfrew. 

Knit with white and black threads for gray tweedy goodness!

There wasn't quite enough fabric to do the cowl as drafted by Tasia so I drafted a smaller on hat folded over. The width is the same but it's about 12" high and folds over to 6".  Why that high, cause that's how much fabric I had.

RTW told me to do this and it works just peachy.

Still looks super cute. This rayon had some drape to it which worked well with the cowl.

I love gray, what does that say about me?

Lastly I decided to jump on the dolmen sleeve bandwagon and knock off a RTW shirt I'd bought, traced and returned.  The RTW shirt had very deep hems, about 3" or so but I found that a total sewing nightmare on the temperamental coverstitch machine.   Changed the hems to 1" and that made the hem and sleeves go much faster.  The neck is finished with a self binding, also attached with the coverstitch machine.  While I like that type of finish it's a pain in the ass to do.  In fact this last shirt reminded me why Renfrew is such a great pattern, you don't have to worry about coverstitching!!!!

I'm a fashionable criminal.

Not totally sure that dolmen sleeves are a great look on me, but it's comfortable and layers with cardigans just fine.

I've worn all 3 shirts multiple times already and as a bonus they were all from stash.  Feels great to bust out 3 garments in a weekend. What a pretty set of triplets they make.

You don't want to know how much more gray fabric is in my stash.

A tee for you and a tee for me

Mom and son sporting their freshly sewn Tee's made from some "seasoned" patterns.

On me Grainline Studio's Scout Tee, on my son Jalie 2918.

Pattern Review is running a pattern stash contest all this month and I've been inspired to sew up a few that have been lurking in the back of my closet.


For my son Jalie 2918 in some ribbed cowboy print cotton.  This is size 2 with the sleeves and hem shortened about an 1".  Either neck or the neck binding needs to be enlarged a bit for the next version.

I'm much too busy to stand still for pictures.

Confession time, I traced this pattern in November to make his cousin some Christmas T-shirts and then never sewed them.  Ooops.  At least this pattern has a huge size range so my nephew might get some correctly size T-shirts at some point.

I ignored the directions and used the coverstitch machine to do the neck binding and hems.  The rest is all straight forward overlocking of seams.  Easy Peasy.

There's a new sheriff in town.

For me Grainline Studio's Scout Woven Tee in Stretch Silk Crepe de Chine. (Still available here)

Pants are Hotpattern's boyfriend jeans, which are awesome.

A muslin showed that there was plenty of ease in the bust but I still really needed a bust dart.  To accomplish this I took out the front pattern piece from the Anthropologie knock off blouse and traced the dart.  Then added the amount of the dart intake to the bottom of the side seam and blended it into the hemline.
Other fitting changes were my standard 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment and 1/4 additional ease added to the hip.  My bustline sucks up a lot of length so 3" were added to the body and 1" to the sleeves.   I should have increased the ease across the upper back for freer arm movement but didn't notice that until wearing the finished shirt.  Thank god for stretch silk!

The only thing that can be a bit tricky in construction is the bias neckline.   But wait, Jen made a detailed tutorial on her website that totally rocks.  I've used it a couple of times now for different garments and highly recommend it.  Love this Tee, it's my new favorite.

Some bust dart action.

Flickr sets are here and here for larger pics.   Next up for the pattern stash contest, a whole lot of dresses.