Marfy Inspired Shirt

 

One of the many sewing blogs that I've been reading lately is The Clothing Engineer.  A lot of her recent posts have been garments sewn from Marfy patterns.  Every time I see one of these I instantly fall in love.  The different seam lines, the colour patterns etc just really appeal to me.  What doesn't appeal is the fact that most of their patterns are dresses - and quite formal ones at that....I don't do dresses.

My life is very casual.  A night out at a restaurant with the family is about as formal as my life gets at this point in time.  Once a year a special dinner out for my anniversary - but really I don't have a lot of need for dresses - especially dressy dresses.  I therefore try very hard not to sew dressy dresses - the last thing I need a a closet full of dresses that have never been worn - so I generally try and stick to shirt, pants, coats etc.  So, as much as I love the look of some of the Marfy dresses I've always avoided buying them.

However I spent some time over the weekend planning what tops I want to sew for the summer.  As I was going through my fabric deciding what should be made up as what I found a lot of scraps of  knit fabric - not quite enough to make a full shirt, but not small enough pieces to throw out.   As I was thinking about what I could do with these fabric pieces I remembered Marfy 4009

How would this look as a knit shirt...I figured that there was only one way to find out.

I used my basic sloper again.  As the plan was to use a knit, in order to generate negative ease I did not add any seam allowances.  As I originally planned to make this top a sleeveless tank top I actually cut away the arm holes a little bit.  I then started sketching the seam lines as per the Marfy design.  Looking back at the Marfy sketch I didn't quite get the sweeping curves but otherwise I'm happy with the design.  I also lengthened one side of the lower hem to create an asymetrical hemline.

I cut the pattern along the seam lines drawn then cut out my material.  I ended up just using 2 of the knit fabrics, a blue and a green.

Sewing the seams actually worked more easily than I had expected, each seam went together nicely first time.  I machine basted each seam together before serging them.

Once the basic top was together I tried it on.  It was very tight so I let the side seams out as much as possible.  It's still a smidge too small but not unwearable. (incentive to lose some weight before summer?)  Unfortunately I didn't like the sleeveless look - it just looked unfinished and too much like an AFL jersey. So I went back and cut out two little cap sleeves.  As I had already cut the arm scythes away they look a little funny but there not much I can do about it now.

Next step was to create a facing for the neckline.  I drafted a front and back facing extending right out to the arm holes and down inch or so below the dip of the V.  Everything was going smoothly until I ran the front edge through the serer and ended up with a huge chunk taken out of the blue section in the front. Thankfully I had drafted the front V fairly high and was able to cut out the ruined section by lowering the V neck and rounding it a bit.  The only issue now is that the junction of blue and green section is no longer right at the tip of the V.

The facing was understitched and then stitched to the seam allowance of the arm seam to hold it on place.

Then all that was left was the finishing of the sleeves and the hem.  I was planning to do a nice finish so there was no top stitching but I got bored, so these hems are now simply turned under and stitched with the lightning stitch.  I had planned to at least do a double needle finish but broke my last double needle just after I started..stupid machine!

Final Verdict:  I like it and will wear it but it's not fantastic.   I love the idea of it and have shown myself that the Marfy designs that I love can be recreated in a way that I will wear them but this first attempt is a bit poor. I would love to try this again and fix those issues that this one has, maybe one day.