Simple Summer Shirts - ruched sleeve T shirt

After the failure of my last top I had to try again.  This time I wanted to use a piece of jersey I had in stash  It's a swirl of colours - blue, greens, pinks,  purples and then over the top small white polka dots.

The pattern is based on a ready to wear shirt that I bought from a thrift shop back in 2013.  The thing I really liked about that shirt was the sleeves that gathered on top of the shoulder.  I figured that I could do that.

I used my basic knit sloper for a bodice that ends directly under my bust with darts under the bust.   I extended the arm hole directly out from the shoulder for about 7" or 8" and then angled it back to the bottom of the arm hole.  I created a V neckline front and back with a deeper V at the front.  I sewed the shoulder seams first  then pressed the seams out and stitched 3/8" away from the seam line on each side to create two channels.  I then made a long rouleaux loop and cut it into 4 and threaded each piece through one of the channels tacking them in place at the neckline and tying a knot at each end.

 I then added two rectangles, one front and one back to make the lower half of the skirt tapering the rectangles out from the under bust dimensions to my hip dimensions.  I sewed up and serged the side seams and then hemmed the bottom with a 1/2" double fold hem.

The neckline I finished off with a narrow band. and left the arm hole unfinished (so that the straps could move within their channels.

I really like the way this shirt came out and find myself reaching for it quite a bit.  Definitely a winner.

Simple Summer Shirts - Red and orange Plaid gauze

Now that summer has finally arrived I'd started to find all the holes in my summer wardrobe - and boy are there a lot of them.  Mainly in the basics - T shirts and shorts.

I've been working on the shorts but figured I needed a few new shirts to go with them.  The first one I started with was my red and orange plaid shirt.

Got to say I don't really love the way this shirt turned out - and yet I imagine that I'll wear it quite a bit anyway.   Why?  Its the fabric - I just love the way this fabric feels to wear. It's a cotton gauze fabric so lightweight and breezy.  I've used it in the blue purple colourway a couple of times. First to make this shirt and then for this dress and whilst neither of them are the most flattering pieces in my wardrobe they are some of the most worn simply because they feel great to wear, and I assume this shirt will end up the same.

When it comes to a pattern I sort of made this up as I went along.  I was thinking of some sort of peasant type blouse with a square neckline, gathering at the shoulders but it never quite worked.

I started with the pattern I used to make this shirt.  Its a self drafted pattern for a dolman sleeve, princess seam woven top.  The princess seam for this shirt starts in the shoulder and I thought that I could remove the princess seam but leave the dart at the shoulder and gather that extra fabric for a really flowy top - well that failed abysmally so the first thing I did was to remove that extra fabric by adding a dart coming down from my shoulder.

The next issue to deal with was this it was just too big all around.  This fabric is quite crinkly and has a lot of mechanical stretch so using a woven pattern just made the top way too big.  In the end I took a 2 inch seam up the back for a total of 4 inches out of the back.  Obviously no pattern matching could be done at this point - I made sure everything lined up horizontally but the vertical stripes I just have to deal with.

I looked at many ways to finish the neckline and decided in the end on a simple facing.  I used a cotton fabric as the facing making it the size I wanted my neckline and gathered the fabric to fit, but even after that the front was still way too big, so I took an inverted box pleat at the center of the neckline and it now sits nicely.   But it's now a trapezoid neckline rather than the square I was originally looking for. (plus the darts are no longer in the right place)

I finished the sleeves simply by serging them and turning them under and stitching - I don't love it but can't think of anything better to do.  The hem is a simple double turned 1/2" hem.

So it's noting great, but it's certainly wearable.  I still have quite a bit of the fabric left over -- I wonder what pattern I can use to finally make a something fabulous out of this fabric!

New Shorts pattern

I've worked a lot over the years on getting a pants sloper to fit me just right.  I've tried numerous different techniques but every time I think I've got it something happens and suddenly they don't seem to fit any more - it's really quite frustrating.

So when the weather started to warm up and I realised that I have no shorts that fit anymore I figured it was about time to try again.    Normally all my pants patterns are based on getting pants to fit snugly around the bum and thighs, but for shorts I want the thighs to be a bit looser - so this time I'm going for more of a trouser fit rather than a jeans fit.

I started my design with an online tutorial for pants sloper by Don McCunn.  I followed this tutorial and ended up with a front to my sloper that looks really good, but unfortunately the back sloper tutorial is not available online.  I may have to look at buying it if I can, but in the mean time I just tried to use the same principals to do the same thing for the back.

I created a pattern and sewed up a muslin using a gingham check pattern.  The front seemed to be fine.

But the back was definitely not,  the main problem being the gusset between front and back.  There just wasn't enough room which meant that the back leg twisted really badly to the inside.  So I started to add a gusset in.

It was still twisting but not quite so badly now.

So I added more, and more and more until I finally got it to the point where the back of the pants hung straight.

I added this gusset onto my pattern. You can see below that I added about 2.5" to the leg width and 2.5"to the crotch length - which resulted in an additional 4"at the mid thigh region.

At this point I was willing to try the pattern with some better fabric.  I had a small amount of wool suiting fabric and decided to start with that.

I cut the pattern as shown above, then ended up taking 4"off the length.  I added a front pocket by cutting the front piece off at the angle.  Using a  strip of self fabric to bind the cut edge and then adding a single layer pocket bag behind the front piece and stitching it directly to the front with two rows of top stitching.

 

A 1" wide waistband with elastic  was added to the top and a 3/8" double turned hem at the bottom.

I'm quite happy with the way these sit at the back.

But I'm not totally sure what happened at the front.  I think it has to do with the hem.

This is one of the better photos:

But this is more like the reality:  Lots of creases around the front crotch.

These are pretty good but I wanted to make a few changes before making a second pair.  First to the center back seam.  At the moment the dart in the back was in the center back of my pants so I wanted to move it over and have the center back seam straight and the dart over the biggest part of my butt.  I also chopped the 4" off the pattern and straightened out the bottom inch to allow for a better hem.

I was then ready for my second attempt. This time in a grey linen.   These pants hang a lot better. 

  I added a center front fly to this which was probably a waste of time - and it took me forever as I kept getting everything wrong and having to unpick and start again. 

I did a normal pocket bag and a more curved pocket this time.

Again I added elastic to my waistband - but then my snap didn't work and I ended up sewing the waistband closed - so now the front fly really is redundant.  Of well!

So these are a lot better, however there is still a little bit of puckering around the front crotch curve.

I may need to try one more iteration of this pattern, but I'm just not sure what to do to get that area to sit properly.  I'd also like to try tapering the bottom of the legs in just a bit and see what happens.