Simple Sequins

 It's past my bedtime but the neighborhood is already exploding with New Year's Eve fireworks (there's nearly an hour left until midnight) so I might as well make this post now, huh

Behold, the first thing made from the as-is sequins: a super simple mock turtleneck...that I still managed to miscalculate

Not enough of a miscalculation to regret, though!

Basically, this is the turtleneck view A from New Look 6068

plus the long sleeves from Kwik Sew 303

(Although when I was just now looking for the image above, I was reminded that I thrifted some ice skating outfit patterns, which...might be a good source for the close-fitting knit sleeve I've been seeking...)

What made it harder was that I wanted to feature the gap in the sequins on this project

which meant I had to squeeze everything from the same side-by-side area of fabric.

(And I have now handled this fabric enough to see all the areas where the sequin rows end like that, only to have the next section of sequins start immediately so there are no gaps, as shown by the way the stitching appears on the back of the fabric, so this gap is definitely an error and not something that was unavoidable.)

The miscalculation was that I forgot, until construction, that the sleeves have ¼" seam allowances, while the shirt has 5/8" seam allowances, and it would be easiest to sew the side seams at ¼" as well.  But I didn't think of that until I added, during the cutting process, some width to the "cut out years ago in size 8" pattern pieces I have for view A.  If I had done that, I would have had a bit more width to squeeze the sleeves out of, and the body of the shirt would have ended up fitting more closely and the neckline would have been a touch less wide.

It's still perfectly wearable, I just had a lot of back and forth with myself regarding whether or not I should just cut it in the pattern size, or use one of the other views to cut it larger, or just add a little to the center front on the fold, or...

I just stuck a note on the pattern about how, hey, the size the "I sewed them a long time ago" views are cut in?  Should still be fine.

Anyway!  I still have a shiny shirt!

None of it was pressed, of course--I barely ever press knit stuff anyway, no reason to try it with a zillion small meltable plastic disks attached.

I reinforced the shoulder seams with fabric cut from one unsequined edge.

For the bottom and sleeve hems, I placed the magnetic seam gauge at ¾" and folded as I sewed, stretching gently.

I had to re-sew the sleeve hems a few times--first because I made them too long, since previous iterations of these sleeves have ended up too short, and then again because I wasn't stretching them enough while stitching and they were uncomfortable.

Surprisingly, the sequins themselves seem like they may not be irritating to wear, even in contact with skin at the sleeve hems and inside of the collar.  They're so small and sewn so flat, they just feel smooth, instead of like thousands of plastic edges.

I attached the collar with a narrow zigzag, to keep the seam a bit stretchable.

And the collar's center back seam isn't too obvious.

The serger is still loaded with navy, but I did order a shade of thread from Wawak that matches the fabric decently (Saba doesn't have the dazzling array of colors that Gutermann has, so I can't be too picky.)

 

  The gap aligns better with the body on the back of one sleeve than the other, but it's not glaringly obvious.

And now I have a shiny sequin shirt, and an idea of how this fabric handles, so I can move on to other projects made from it, next year.

Which starts in about five minutes.