Tee for Me

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This little method of converting a man’s XXL t-shirt into a shirt for me is something I developed when I started noticing that the fabrics they were using for women’s basic T-shirts were far inferior to what they were using for men’s t-shirts and there was nothing available in fabric stores that equaled what they were using for the men’s shirts either.  The women’s shirts I could buy were 2-3 times the price of the men’s and would shrink like mad and wear out after just a few washings while my husband’s and son’s t-shirts would last for years.  Well, I figured if I bought extra-large men’s T-shirts, there should be enough fabric there to make a shirt for a small-ish woman.  Turns out I was right.  Also, very early in the process I realized I could capitalize on some of the sewing already done.  So, I developed this way to make a shirt that fits me and I’ll share it with you:

First, get a man’s shirt that is big enough that your bust will fit comfortably within the armscye area of the man’s shirt.  This is key because the armholes are very deep in men’s shirts.  Also make sure your hips will fit lower down.

Next have a simple t-shirt pattern on hand that fits you well, the way you like to wear your shirts.  Note that often the fabric used in men’s shirts, while beefy and durable, might not have as much stretch and recovery as what you are used to sewing with if you make tees for yourself.  If it’s really stiff, you may need to go up a size.  I use Jalie 2805 for this and I do go up a size from my usual U to V.  You see the shirt I’m going to use and the pattern set out and ready to go.  Note that the shirt has been washed and dried in the same way that I plan to launder the final shirt:

Next step is to cut the shirt apart in this very specific way.  First, locate the side seam.  This can be tricky because these shirts rarely have actual side seams.  The body fabric is woven in a continuous tube and might be wildly off grain.  Here you see me beginning to make the cut:

And here we are approaching the sleeve seam.  Go all the way right through that seam and and then cut in the same way up the other side seam.  Then, open up the shirt.  Next cut off the sleeves by following the armscye seams exactly with your scissors.

Lay the sleeves out flat together, right or wrong sides together, your choice, and set your chosen sleeve pattern on top of the aligned sleeves.  I like to make use of the sleeve hem and this is how I lay out the pattern piece.  Note that I do not touch the sleeve hem when I cut out the sleeves, but only cut the top and sides of the sleeve pattern and that preserves the hem.  You see that I am using the cap sleeve length offered on this pattern and have dropped the underarm seam a little below the hem of the shirt sleeve on both sides equally.  You can experiment with the sleeve length by moving the pattern piece along its vertical axis, keeping the sides an equal distance from the hem, this is what I like:

Set those cut sleeves aside and work on the body next.  Lay out the shirt with the neckband and shoulder seams intact like so:

Line up and match the 2 shoulder seams, folding the shirt along the center back and center front keeping right sides out, wrong sides together:

It will look like this photo below from the right side when it is lined up correctly.  Wrong sides are together, match up and pin together the 2 shoulder seams:

A wider view of the shirt to this point.  On the left is the center back fold.  On the right are the cut side seams and armscye all lined up with pins securing the shoulder seams together:

Next, you will place the center back of your back pattern piece on the center back fold line you’ve just created in the shirt as best as you are able.  Please note as shown in the closeup photo below that I am matching the sewing line of the shoulder seam of the pattern to the finished shoulder seam of the original shirt, NOT the cutting line of the shoulder seam of the pattern.  The yellow pin shows the location of the exact shoulder seam.  Jalie patterns have 1/4 inch seam allowances:

The pattern piece fits well within the shirt everywhere:

Now you will cut across the the hem and then up back side seams up to the shoulder, where you will STOP. 

Remove the back pattern piece and do this exact same procedure with the front pattern piece.  Do not remove the pins that are holding your shoulder seams together.  Here is the front pattern piece placed on the shirt ready to be cut in the same way as the back. The yellow pin is still showing where the shoulder seam is:

Continue to cut down the front side seams to the hem and across your hemline. 

From here, all you have to do is sew the sleeves back on to the new armscye you’ve just cut as you normally would and sew sew up the two side-to-underarm seams, each in a single pass, and then hem the bottom.  The sleeves are already hemmed and your neckline was also finished in the factory.  Here is the final shirt:

There are two further refinements of this method that I employ.  The first I learned from Pamela Leggett of Pamela’s Patterns.  And for the record, she has a pattern you can buy to do this type of conversion in a different way.  I don’t own the pattern because I had already developed my method before I was aware of her pattern.  Some people may prefer her way, which results in a slightly different look.  All of her patterns I’ve purchased and sewn have worked very well for me.  I especially love her pencil skirt pattern for stretch wovens, but that’s a different post!  The refinement I mentioned is to steam the ribbing at the neckline and when it softens from the steam, fold it to the inside of the shirt, pin and top stitch down.  This does make a more feminine-looking, slightly lower neckline with a narrower binding and is very easy to do.  Thank-you Pamela!

The second refinement is to create one pattern piece to lay on top of the shirt by joining the pattern shoulder seams, being sure to overlap the pattern pieces so that you are lining up the shoulder sewing lines, not butting the 2 cutting lines.  Sometimes I do it this way and sometimes the original way.  Depends on my mood that day and it also can depend on the shirt and how it lays once cut apart.  You do have to have a longer cutting space to lay out and cut the combined pattern piece in one go.

It definitely takes longer to explain how to do this than to just do it!  I can make one of these shirts in under 2 hours easily. 

 

What’s in a name?

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Generally, I’m not too persnickety about what you call me as long as it’s not meant to be mean.  Here’s today’s quibble:  I like to do things with fabric, thread and needles.  You can call me a seamstress, a dressmaker, a tailor, a quilter, a dollmaker, an embroiderer, or a knitter and I’ll admit to any of those designations without kicking up a dust, but I do take exception, as one who sews, to the term I read in the Modesto Bee article today about the closure of  JoAnn’s Fabric Stores as a sewer.  I’m sure you can guess why.  I understand that a gender-neutral term for one who sews as a hobby is needed.  Sewist seems to be in Vogue on PatternReview where we who like to sew clothing go to compare notes on everything to do with our chosen hobby.  Should I bother to alert the editors of The Bee and tell them to get their minds out of the sewer?

The Damp Stetch

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It works, it works! I’ve just finished stitching a project on linen and it was increasingly puckered and bumpy every time I released it from the hoop after a session of embroidery.

See what I mean? Seriously rumpled.

I was worried I’d never get the background linen to flatten out while keeping the heavily embroidered flowers from getting completely destroyed by an iron. Mary Corbet to the rescue. This was a project kit I purchased from her and in the instructions it says not to press the completed embroidery before finishing it into a scissors keeper envelope, but to damp stretch instead. Instructions for doing that are available on her site here.

So here goes:

Pinned, spritzed and drying.

The finished product is nothing short of amazing.

Linen so flat, flowers and leaves still dimensional!

I highly recommend this procedure. When I get the project finishing completed, I will post an update. Getting the embroidery done is about 2/3rds of the battle.

Both Sides Now

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Strathmore Bristol is excellent for many uses, as it comes in a variety of finishes, weights (plies) and price points. The really good stuff is the 500 series, whether smooth, semi-smooth or plate (smoothest of all with a hard, shiny surface). Today I’m preparing a piece of Semi-Smooth paper for drawing and I wanted to know which side was up with this paper. Most paper has a right and wrong side, depending on what you’re doing with it. A visit to the Strathmore site reveals that Bristol is designed to have 2 identical working surfaces, top and bottom.

Shown above is the paper after being “toned” with graphite. This is a fun way to work. Any highlights are erased from the medium tone of the paper and darks are made with pencils of varying hardness. HB or F is a good place to start. In the photo above you can see the tools I use for the toning process. It’s pretty simple, you get some graphite powder, load up a cloth or wad of clean, soft paper, like paper toweling or even Kleenex, and spread it around. I’m lucky. I have a source of pure graphite powder because I use the drafting-style clutch pencil holders for 2mm leads that have no wood attached. I use the rotary-style lead pointer shown above and it provides plenty of ground up graphite, which I would discard if I didn’t use it to tone paper.

The plan is to procure an almond branch with at least one blossom open and go from there. The paper is ready and waiting!

The cyclamen leaf study above is an example of the technique. Some artists are obsessive about getting the ground color even, but I like a little variety there, as long as there are no obvious spots that are rubbings of something that was under the surface, or worse fingerprints! Thus the glove in the first photo.

Updated 5 days later:

Below is the finished drawing of almond blossoms, shown with more of the tools I use for this technique:

The clutch style lead holders with F and HB leads, my 2 most used grades.

Stick style white plastic erasers, carved to give good edges.

Kneaded eraser, endlessly useful for erasing small areas and touching up the background if any stray marks are made on it.

Soft brush to remove stray grains of graphite and eraser noodles.

The final word on this paper is that its surface takes the graphite tone very evenly and nicely, but it is hard to erase back to pure white. It is excellent for straight drawing with graphite, but not as good for the toned ground technique as other papers I’ve used in the past. Still, this little drawing is a keeper I’ll sign and likely frame.

Investments

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Lately I’ve been dragging out and wearing garments I made long ago and this winter-themed vest and its companion jacket is what I chose to wear yesterday. I guess I’ve been overdoing it on the vests because I was asked the very impertinent question, “How many vests do you own?” I didn’t know so I went home and counted. Answer: 19.

Well, I like vests, all kinds. So what of it? I think I might create or buy another one soon to make it an even 20. Investments pay dividends in wardrobe versatility.

From High Dudgeon to Never Mind in 3 Easy Steps

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I’m having an Emily Litella moment after harvesting my garden this morning and finding my round zucchinis this year look like a pale imitation of the round zukes I’ve grown in past years.   The seed that I bought from Urban Farmer clearly pictured nice round, dark green fruits on their website. (Of course I don’t need to tell you that zucchini is technically a fruit and not a vegetable but let’s not quibble about that, the main thing is that Zucchini should be GREEN.) 

You’ve all likely seen the paler ‘white’ zucchinis that are available year-round in grocery stores. I will buy them if I have no other choice and really need zucchini for something, but I never have grown them and never planned to add them to my garden.  They are a bit pear-shaped and often have less flavor, but they also seem to hold up better so it’s no surprise that grocery stores carry them all year, even in the depths of winter when real zukes are sad and rubbery and not worth buying.   Anyhow, I ordered that round zucchini seed from Urban Farmer and grew it on only to discover this week that it’s a pale green variety rather than the dark green one pictured and it’s too late to start over with different seed.

I was ready to call the company at my first opportunity to complain, especially after I steamed the first ones today and found them mushy, watery and tasteless.  Because there were so many ready to pick today, I also made up a batch of my Zucchini Soup.  I was expecting a disappointing, pale, thin soup lacking in flavor but:  Oh. My. Goodness.  For some reason when these babies are cooked down with a little olive oil and onion plus more than a little salt and then puréed with my immersion blender, they are transformed from watery, flavorless disappointment into creamy perfection featuring a lovely and robust but not overwhelming squash flavor undertone.

So, never mind Urban Farmer.  No complaints here. 

Oh, the 3 easy steps?  Harvest, cook up, taste.

What’s an Ort?

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No, an ort is not an astronomical phenomenon.  It’s a small scrap or remainder of something you’ve consumed (generally eaten).  But if you guessed Astronomy, you’d be closer than you think because there is something called the Oort cloud that is an accumulation of icy debris at the edges of our galaxy from which comets are born.  It was named after a person named Oort. 

That’s all interesting, but for today’s post, we are actually talking about small bits of thread that are too short and/or frayed to use anymore that are left when you sew, embroider, quilt, etc.  These little bits of thread are a nuisance and it’s best to keep them contained in your work area.  For years I’ve used little origami boxes for this purpose, and they’ve worked well, but they are wearing out from being folded and unfolded so many times.  Somehow, I came across a couple of patterns online for “thread catchers” made of fabric.  I call them ort boxes, but they are not boxes at all.  Really, they are teeny-tiny garbage cans.

Here’s a photo of the 2 designs I’m testing:

Here they are all ready to receive spent thread ends.

But it’s very important for the ort boxes to collapse to keep the threads contained during storage and/or transport until they can be emptied.  So here they are collapsed:

They are both quite light small and yet can hold a lot of thread snips so I think both will do the job nicely.  I’m partial to the way the circular one closes like a camera aperture with a twist of the wrist, but I’m also a fan of the triangular one because it gets flatter, has an interesting shape when closed and is cuter because of the buttons.  What is it about non-functioning buttons that makes things so cute?  The buttons do serve a purpose here, which is to hold the flaps in place when the box stands open, but that job could be done as well or better with any bit of felt stitched in place or just a simple thread tack.  The buttons definitely add panache.

If you should want to make your own ort box(es), just Google “Thread Catcher Pattern” and you’ll be off and running.  Tutorials abound.  I didn’t change anything about the triangle design.  For the round one, I did substitute a canning lid ring for the ring cut from a Pringles Box.  I don’t eat Pringles.  Nor do I know anyone who does.  Are Pringles really even food?  I think the jury’s out on that question, but that’s another post entirely.

Conversation From a Long Marriage

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Him:  What did you do with the packet of pumpkin seeds?

Her:  I was paying; the checker handed the packet to you.

Him:  I must have put in on the cart and then you took the cart to put it away.

Her:  It wasn’t in your pocket?

Him:  No, I didn’t put in in my pocket.  I’ll go look again in the car.

Her:  Okay.

Him:   It was in my pocket.

Her: Huh.

Riotous laughter ensues.

(“I told you so” is strictly for amateurs…it never gets a laugh and shared laughter is one of the primary keys to a long and successful marriage.  Also growing things together: families, gardens, etc.)

Keeping track…

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I’m working on 2 illustrations simultaneously because I’ve got 2 sketchbooks from the currently running sketchbook exchange project in my studio at the same time and the plant material I wanted to use was wilting fast. I just hope I don’t get the books out of order when I go to mail them since I’ve made such an issue of keeping the books flowing from artist to artist in the proper order. So Columbine flower is first and should go out this week and Purple Honeywort is second and should wait until this time next month.

In order, both still in progress:

Wait, I added them in the proper order, but they came out in reverse order. You see how easy it is to get mixed up!!!

Embroidering a tale

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Generally, when you say someone is ’embroidering a tale’ you mean they are adding details to the story that may not strictly be true, but I assure you the details of this story are quite true and the embroidery is, literally, embroidery.  With a needle and thread.  And hoops and scissors and needlebooks and all the accoutrements one collects for a hobby like this, but I digress.  This story is about why I started a collection of embroidered kitchen towels to celebrate the seasons of the year and here they are:

Why?  To display on this cutting board:

Like this:

And now for the tale, but it’s a bit of a shaggy dog of a teacher tale, I warn you, and it requires some setup that goes back a ways in time.  I’ll be as brief as I can.  

When our son James started high school, he and I went to collect his schedule and it seemed to have an error because it placed him in both Algebra and Geometry in his first semester.  I asked the guidance counselor if that was correct because I’d thought those 2 courses needed to be in sequence and that Algebra was a prerequisite for Geometry.  It seemed like a lot of math for a first-semester freshman in high school to take on all at once and James said he didn’t think he’d signed up the previous spring for 2 math classes at once but he wasn’t sure.  The harried counselor took one look at the printed schedule and said, “Oh no, no, no, that’s not right…here we’ll just leave him in Algebra and sub in Wood Shop for Geometry, here you go!”   And she handed the marked up schedule back to us and turned to the next parent/child duo in line to get their schedule confirmed.  Wait, what?  WOOD SHOP?  I turned to James and asked, “Is this okay with you?”  He shrugged and said something like, “Sure, I guess.”  If I’d had more than 10 seconds to think about it, I’d have insisted they leave the schedule intact because he was more than capable of studying high school Algebra and Geometry at the same time, but we’d been summarily dismissed and I figured learning to use wood working tools was probably a good thing for a young boy who spent most of his time reading and noodling on his computer.  

A little more background is required.  The high school had just hired a new Ag/Shop teacher, a Mr. Butters, who was purported to be an expert in farm mechanics and shop with many years of real world experience.  No amount of real world experience in any field can prepare one for the pressure cooker of the high school classroom environment and poor Mr. Butters was no match for the students in his shop class.  James came home day after day with stories about the misadventures of Mr. Butters, but the ones pertinent to the story at hand are as follows.  There were lockers for the woodshop students in which they were to store their projects in progress, but locks were not allowed.   There was a final project assigned: a laminated cutting board.  Each day, James would cut the wood he needed to make his cutting board and place the wood in his unlocked locker.  The next day he would go back and his wood would have been stolen and he’d cut the required pieces again.  This continued until there was no more wood left and he still hadn’t made his cutting board.  So he went to the scrap wood pile and scrounged enough pieces of scrap wood  to make a cutting board that was an exact replica of the one that was assigned, only smaller in every dimension (a real life Geometry problem if ever there was one…) and Mr. Butters took one look at the finished project and said, “It’s not the right size,” and gave him a low grade on that assignment, which brought his semester grade for wood shop down to a C because it was the final and most important project.  Later that year after I’d gotten to know the principal and was meeting with him in his office on a completely different subject I did tell him the story and said, “There goes James’ chance at Valedictorian…”  thinking it was a pretty good joke.  And indeed, he DID miss being Valedictorian four years later by a very few grade points, which was just fine by him since he didn’t want to give the Valedictory address anyway and his nearly perfect SAT scores secured his place at his college of choice.  All’s well that end’s well, although Mr. Butters was summarily dismissed at the end of the next year.

Now, this cutting board became a decorative fixture in my kitchen because James had made it and given it to me and it was a reminder of a very funny story and a visual aid should I care to tell the story of how James, our National Merit Scholar, was graded down and got a C in wood shop for figuring out how to shrink the cutting board pattern to accommodate the scraps of wood left to him after he’d cut pieces for nearly everyone else in the class at the proper dimensions.  All for the lack of a lock on his woodshop locker!  But then, I came into my kitchen one morning and found someone had USED the cutting board and made scratches on it!  Now that would not do at all.  I had to find a way to send a message that this cutting board was decorative only and never to be used.  So I looped an obviously decorative kitchen towel over it.  Then I got the idea that it would be fun to have a rotating seasonal display of embroidered kitchen towels.  And a collection was born.  And a cutting board saved.  And a family story memorialized.