Hacks

In April, a friend sent me a bunch of cloth, both in the form of yardages and also clothing items that had already been salvaged to varying degrees for craft purposes (like t-shirts with the graphics cut out) or had rips and holes, so still more than suitable for re-using for doll sewing.  Several of the yardage pieces are large enough to use for human-size stuff, including a bit of knit with a tie dye print.

My first thought was "Make a hoodie for the kiddo!" which he greeted with "Another hoodie, seriously?"  He does like hoodies, just...yeah, he has a lot of them...  So I asked what else I could make, and we ended up with 'long sleeve t-shirt.'

OK!  I can do that!  I mean...well...hmm.  I don't have a kids' t-shirt pattern, but I could probably use his existing commercially made shirts to draft a pattern...although...most of those are getting a bit small for him...  And I do have Simplicity 8027, which I bought for the kid size motorcycle jacket, but it also has a t-shirt-ish pattern, for a fitted 3/4 sleeve knit shirt.  I could flatten out the curves, maybe use a larger size than measurements would call for, but what about sleeve length and neckline rise and ribbing and...well, there's the KwikSew 1650 that was acquired in the giant thrift bag o'patterns last year, maybe I could use it for a bit of guidance?

...and I did measure the kiddo...a little bit...especially when I realized I wouldn't have quite enough cloth to cut things as-drafted...

And first I made a sample-y shirt, although it needed some hacks of its own to work with the cloth I had--it was made from a somewhat worn polo shirt and a previously-upcycled t-shirt...



The friend who sent the cloth has an affinity for bright colors and loud prints, which is A-OK with the kiddo.

 When I showed him this shirt, he gave it a thumbs up.

The angle insets on the sides were necessitated by the fact that I had used a bit of the original polo shirt front for doll clothes (after using up all of the sleeves for other doll clothes) and so found myself needing to compensate.  I like the result!

 The insets also help the sleeves make sense.  There definitely wasn't enough of the polo shirt left for sleeves once I decided to make a kiddo shirt from it, so I pirated the sleeves from the cut-up blue t-shirt, leaving the original hems in place.  I did consider sewing over the coverstitching with the bright blue thread--and I still might--but, enh, it's not like this kid doesn't wear sleeve-hiding hoodies all the time anyway...

The blue t-shirt gave up its neckline ribbing, too.  I know I probably could have sewn it in with the serger, but I still don't quite trust serger stitching to stay in place.

This print is not very on-grain, although I think I got things aligned better on the back than on the front.  Of course.

Following the example set by the sacrificial t-shirt, I offset the ribbing seam from the shoulder seam, and my sewing machine's loose belt appreciated that.

So that worked...provisionally--the kiddo still hasn't tried it on, buuut that didn't keep me from going right into the next version of this pattern: Sleeves.

Huh.  The...uh...the shoulders would benefit, visually, from being a bit wider... *scrolls back up to the first shirt*   Maybe that appearance is a function of the print.  I'll alter the pattern anyway...

The ribbing also started as just ribbing, not an already-existing neckband, so it's a bit less refined.  (And actually no it wasn't 'just ribbing' it was a tube top.  With a Pier 1 label.)

And when it was time to cut out the sleeves I realized there really wasn't enough of the cloth to do things properly.  So the sleeves are cut on the bias.  Yeah.  Knit on the bias.  I know, I know.  But this shirt will either spend most of its time-being-worn under a hoodie or maybe even becoming pajamas. (I mean...it looks like pajamas...yeah, definitely need to widen those shoulders before using this pattern again.)

 The cuff is a bit longer than I might otherwise have liked, but I was still compensating for the lack of cloth to make sleeves as long as the kiddo's arms.  We can call it a stylistic choice.  And maybe it will distract from the angle of the grain.

As with the first version of this shirt, I ironed up 1" on the bottom, stitched at 5/8", then again about 3/16" above that. (I use a straight stitch foot with a narrow right prong, so things can be topstitched easily at less than 1/4", which just...pleases my brain.)

And by aligning the guide edge with the inside of the presser foot prong, I can topstitch really close to things, as I did around the neck band here and do all the time in doll clothes.

 In retrospect, if I had ignored the nap and played around with the back piece placement a bit, I might have been able to eke out a bit more for the sleeves.  And the shoulder width on the back looks better than it does on the front.  Maybe it is the print.  Still going to widen the pattern.

Also offset the ribbing seam from the shoulder seam on this one.  As well as giving fewer layers for my machine to deal with if it had been aligned exactly with the shoulder seam, I also like having the ribbing seam be not in the center back.  Centering can make things more obvious than they should be.

And of course there's topstitching on the shoulder.  It's me, after all.