Tons 'o' Tees

Yup, that's right - Tons of tees - or tonnes - ok well not really, but a lot of them. I've been collecting knit fabrics for the last year - mostly because it is really hard to find good variety in quality cotton knits. So I snag them where I can and have now amassed a nice stash - too much of a stash really - time to get busy using some of them up. It was always my intention, after this blogpost, that I would just make up a bunch of tees for myself. Well that was in January and well, you know how it goes, spring and summer rolled around and other projects took priority and it just never happened. Now it's well into fall and almost winter again and I figured I'd better get them done soon or I'd be putting them on hold for another year ~ Plus that stash really needed a little denting. So I cut cut cut out a bunch of them using the Zoela pattern, then collected a bunch of grown-up embroidery to compliment the fabrics (harder than you might think really), then stitched them on and mass-sewed them all together. Now I should say that t-shirts whip up pretty quickly and it really shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but finally I managed to finish up the last one. And here they are -
ok there are only 4 but it still took me weeks to complete them all. I would really love to make a few more - do I need more tees? No! But the fun is in the designing after all.





And wouldn't you know it, whenever I'm having fun with the designing part, my dear daughter shows up and wants to help - this is her way of saying she wants to design some for herself - and of course she wants matching embroidery too - I have created a monster - a design monster that is. But that's cool! One of these days she is going to compete with me for sewing machine space. But in the meantime, here are some of her self-designed versions using the Farbenmix Drunter and Druber pattern:



Some random t-shirt wisdom from me:
A serger isn't an absolute must, but it sure does make for nice sewing, so put it on your Christmas wish list!
Use wooly nylon in your loopers to give your seams a softer feel on the inside. I've noticed that there is less chance of unraveling with this stretchy fabric if you use the wooly.
Don't stretch the fabric as you are sewing the seam, this will help prevent puckering. One exception would be necklines where you might have to stretch a bit if you are easing in the neckline ribbing. You might have to adjust your feed dogs especially when you are sewing across the grain with ribbed cottons.
Go crazy and have fun! There are lots of new products out there to help embellish your tees. You can use Fold-over elastic (FOE) on the necklines/hemlines/sleeves in place of ribbing if you prefer - gives it a different look. There are also lots of embellished elastics you can use to apply to your edges. Consider picot edged elastic, or ruffled edge elastics to add a little flair to your tee at the neckline or on the sleeves. (Myrinda at Fabrichound always has a nice selection)
Use ballpoint needles - these are usually marked 90/14 BP or 80/12 BP
Don't sweat the knits! Check your anxiety at the door! It's easier than it looks/sounds - You can do this!
Practice on an old t-shirt first if you are still worried about it.

Happy sewing!

Goodbye ready-made!

I have been playing alot with knit fabrics lately. They are my new favs. Tee-shirts really do whip up very quickly. There aren't that many seams to sew and nothing very complicated. The toughest thing about knits is to not pull the fabric so it puckers. That makes keeping the fabric flow evenly through the machine pretty important but aside from that there isn't much else to master. I have found that lowering my feed-dogs a bit helps with feeding heavier weight interlocks or multiple layers of fabric.

Finally, after many months of good intentions, I managed to eek out some time to make a couple tees for myself. So I pulled out my Zoela pattern and got to work. Zoela is a simple raglan sleeve pattern but I'm not usually fond of that style on myself so I started with some scrap knits to do a dry run before I committed the nice knits to the project. After fitting the dry run I was able to proceed to the good knits ~ Et voila. I think the hardest part is coming up with unique and cute fabric combos, well that and my limited knit supply. Nice quality knit fabrics are actually pretty hard to find, not to mention two or more of them if you plan to mix prints together.


Taking a page from our european sewing sisters, I've been inserting little folded ribbons into the side seams of just about all of my tees lately. I don't know why I am so enamored of this approach ~ must be the little added detail I suppose ~ well, that and an excuse to use some of my ribbon stash. The ribbon here is from Patty Young's Andalucia line which is rapidly becoming an all-time fav of mine. Works well with these fabrics, yes?

Now that I've got the basics down, I think I'll embark on some embroidery embellished tees and save myself the exorbitant costs they are asking for ready-made ones these days.