Pattern Review Sewing Bee - T-Shirt inspired by Childhood

It's that time of year again.  It's the Annual Pattern Review Sewing Bee. 

This is my 4th year competing.  I love doing these sorts of contest as it makes me stretch myself.  I often make the same basic patterns over and over and it's nice to have a reason to try something new and different.

This year, the round 1 requirement was to Sew a T-Shirt Inspired by Childhood.

I've cut and paste most of my post here for those who aren't on Pattern Review.


Inspiration

When I hear childhood and T-shirt in the same sentence my mind immediately goes back to when my kids were around 4 and 6 years old. I made them what I think of today as classic kids T-shirts. They were raglan shirts with the main body in one bright colour, sleeves in a second bright colour and collar and bands in a third colour. 

I had so much fun going back through old photos trying to find photos of some of these shirts.  They were so little!

Those T-shirts were some of the favourite things I made for the kids and they got worn as long as possible, being converted from short sleeve shirts to long sleeve shirts when the weather turned cold so that we could get more wear out of them. I have fantastic memories of the outings we used to have in these shirts - to the zoo, the carnival, even just to the park - and they were great since, as they were so bright and distinctive I could spot them easily.

My kids are now a bit older, both in their tweens and these days T-shirts are all about their latest obsession. Gone are the bright primary colours, now it's all about a plain background and a logo. For my son it's T-Shirts with logos of his favourite video games or You Tubers, for my daughter its all about anime and Sonic logos. In the lead up to this Christmas, they both spent hours poring over internet pages of T-shirts with funny slogans trying to find that perfect T-Shirt to give to the other as a gift.  This was the one of the chosen ones.

And so I decided that my T-shirt would be inspired by the different stages of childhood, From young kids on outings at the zoo I've taken the raglan sleeve shirt in primary colours with bands around the arms like we got when we extended them out to full length T-Shirts. And from my older tweens I've taken the idea of a funny meme added to the front of the shirt, but in this case it's based on my obsession - Sewing!

I did some research into different sayings I could use and in the end decided on "If I'm holding a seam ripper, Now is NOT a good time". I chose this as my kids have always had a habit of choosing that one moment when I'm frustrated with my sewing to decide that they need something now! I also wanted to add a visual of a seam ripper opening up a seam.

Pattern Description:

To make my T-Shirt I used my old faithful self drafted raglan T-Shirt pattern. 

The side seams on this shirt have been angled forward and wrap from the back of the arm hole around to the front. 

The shirt is fitted through the bust and in the back but drapes nicely over my stomach.

I've used some basic colour blocking based on my inspiration, with the body in blue and the sleeves in red. Two blue stripes were added to the sleeve around the elbow as per my inspiration.

The neckline is finished with a V black ribbed neck band. The arms and body are also finished with black ribbed cuffs.

Fabric Used:

For this project I've used two fabrics. The blue and red fabrics are different colourways of the same fabric. It's a jersey knit fabric almost like a lightweight sweater knit where the knit side has a fleecy brushed finish. Whilst I don't know what fibers this fabric is made from I believe, based on the drape and feel and a quick burn test, that it's a rayon/poly blend. For this project I've used the fleecy brushed side as the inside of the shirt as I figured it'd be more comfortable.

The neckband, cuffs and bottom band are made from a black cotton rib knit fabric from stash.

Design Details:

The embellishment on the front of the shirt was the most important thing for my inspiration. For the lettering I printed the words at the size I wanted and in the font I wanted

and used yellow tracing paper to transfer the design to the un-sewn front pattern piece. I then used black cotton (and some Red) to embroider the words. 

I used some stretch knit interfacing on the back of the fabric to stabilise the fabric before embroidering. 

For the image I cut a piece of red fabric to the size and shape of the cut out I wanted plus 1/4"seam allowances. I then cut a hole in the fabric where I wanted my insert and hand stitched the red insert into the blue backing fabric. 

I used black cotton to "sew" the cutout closed. Then I had to add the seam ripper. I back stitched around the outline that I wanted then used a thick cotton to fill in the handle, and silver metallic thread for the shaft. A french knot in red was used at the tip of the lower prong.

I'm really proud of the way this turned out. It's probably not the neatest/best embroidery in the world but I'm proud of my attempt.

When I had finished my design looked great from the front, but the back was a mess. In order to hide this I cut a second piece of the front pattern and layered in right side to wrong side behind the first and basted them together and treated it as one piece for the rest of the time.

When I tried on my shirt I realised that I had cut my front neckline too low. After trying a number if other alternatives I settled on adding a blue V into the neck to raise the neckline by about 2 inches.

Sewing Details:

All seams were basted together with a long stitch on my sewing machine and then overlocked/serged.

The neckband, cuffs and bottom band were all sewed/serged to the body in a single layer, then turned back on itself, the edge turned under and then hand stitched in place for a really neat finish both inside and out.

The neck band is interfaced on the right side with stretchy knit interfacing.
As I was working with only scraps of the red fabric I had to piece my sleeves together at the elbow. I then used the blue bands to conceal this seam by butting the band against the ridge of the seam.

The bands were interfaced and the edges pressed under then the band was top stitched in place before the sleeve was sewn up.

Conclusion:

I adore this T-Shirt and know that I will get a lot of wear out of it. It is comfortable and warm thanks to the fabric, the colour blocking makes it bright and cheerful and I'm really proud of the embroidery work on my slogan. Overall a very successful make.