A Beatles vintage T

A couple of months ago as my weekly sit and knit group, one of the other knitters told us about a yard sale going on just around the corner with boxes and boxes of old patterns.  Of course I couldn't resist so on my way home I took a quick detour.  Well she wasn't joking when she said there were boxes and boxes of patterns - and they were selling them cheap - like a whole box for $3.  What's a girl to do I ask you?  I thought about jut grabbing a box to two, but I've been trying to reduce my stash of junk lately and didn't want to add too much, so instead I sat there for probably close to an hour going through each of the patterns to see what I would like.  I ended up finding probably 20 patterns or so that I really liked and that might even fit and left it at that.  A pretty good haul for $3.

One of the patterns I found was a Carefree Pattern from McCall's 4488.

View C is what I bought this pattern for.  The pattern is in a size medium 14-16 which is probably the closest size to my bust size though still too small in the waist and hips, but that should be easy enough to rework. However since I had no idea jut how the size would work I wanted to try it with some "not precious" material.  I went through my stash and couldn't really find anything I was willing to waste so went to my to be recycled box of old clothes that no longer get worn but I can't throw out.

What I found was an old shirt that I bought many years ago - probably some time back in the 90's.  The shirt is long sleeved and button up but made from a very light weight fabric so  I could never find an time to wear it.  However the print on the fabric is fabulous - a psychedelic Beatles theme.  I decided it was about time I remade the shirt.

I cut the shirt apart at all the seams and started laying out the pattern pieces.  The back pattern piece fitted onto the back piece of fabric fairly well - the only adjustments I made were taking 5" out of the length  (which I would have done anyway as at 5'1" all patterns are too long for me) and removing the seam down the back putting the pattern on the existing back fold.

I did not have enough fabric to make the big puffy sleeves so I went for the sleeves on view E instead.  I cut these out of the top of the existing sleeve pieces and that left enough to get the bust piece out of the remaining sleeve fabric.  The problem came from getting the lower front piece out of the existing shirt front pieces.  I had to put an extra seam down the center front, but I also did not have enough width so ended up having to piece an extra strip down the side of the front piece to make it work.

It's a bit hard to see the seam lines in all that pattern! 

The top half of the original front pieces were then used for the facings with just a little left over.

Once the front pieces were sewn together I followed all instructions from the pattern with the exception of putting the sleeves in flat then sewing the side seams rather than doing the side seams first the setting in the sleeves.

At the very end there was just one more little variation - I had cut the front and back pieces with the existing hem on the bottom - with the exception of  a 5/8" wide section on one side of the center front.  To disguise this I took the center front seam up about 2 inches and then cut on an angle till the piece that was missing was no longer an issue creating a triangular vent at center front, this was turned under and top stitched.

The final verdict - I like it but there are a few issues that I would change if I were to make this pattern again.

• The fit around the waist and hips is fine even though it should be too tight according to all the measurements, 
•  It could probably do with a large bust adjustment as the angled seam at front does not sit right under the bust but rather about 1/4 of the way up the bust.  
• The sleeves are a smidge too tight and could do with an extra 1/4-1/2 inch around the bicep. 
•  Finally there is a bit of pooling in the lower back but if I just put in the back seam like I was supposed to that would disappear.