“Wearable” Muslin Renfrew…. plus MORE bonus knitting!

WOW!  It has been a hot minute, has it not dear reader!  I could make jokes about being busy reading, knitting or the folks coming down for a visit (which is all true), but honestly I just kinda fell off the blogging wagon for a bit there   Which is par for the course for me- super on top of it for a month or two… and then NOTHING.  [P.S. Do NOT ask how long it’s been since I went running!]

But that’s all in the past, ’cause I’m back with a finished T-shirt!  Behold- I give you my first attempt at Sewaholic’s Renfrew t-shirt!

I cut this in a size 12, grading out to a size16 at the bust….which made for an incredibly funny looking pattern piece!  You’ll also notice I left off the bottom band…. side note: I HATE bands at the bottom of shirts 😛  I also left off the bands on the sleeves, which I’m considering going back and adding on.

I used this post, among others, to help with construction and working with knit fabric.  I used a twin needle on the neckline (more about that cluster-fuck below!), but just a zig-zag stitch on all the hems…  It kinda worked, but I think I’m going to need to find a better finish in the future.

I ended up using a bit of bias tape to stabilize the shoulder seams.  I didn’t have any twill tape and did not want to spend the time, money and energy to get some.  I read somewhere on some post in the comments section that someone used this method…. it seemed to work ok.  Aaaand I did not finish the insides AT ALL, because knit fabric!

When thinking about making this I was real nervous about it being to tight/small for the “girls”.   At the end of the day though this actually turned out to be too BIG for me.  This is mostly because I generally like my clothes, especially my t-shirts, to be very fitted- probably too fitted if you ask my mother.

Speaking of my mother….she actually gave me the fabric.  It was one of a bunch of fabric pieces she picked up for me at her church rummage sale.  It’s actually really nice and soft and drapey…. and I’m kinda sad now that I wasted it on a muslin 😦

Sooo…. I bought a twin needle special for this project.  You can see it’s “fine” work on the neckline above.  The original plan was to use the twin needle for the hems as well, instead of just zig-zag stitching it.  Well…. instead I broke the shit out of it!  I believe multiple things went wrong here… the needle was too narrow, my machine needs a tune-up (the old girl is from the ’60s after all) and when shit started to go sideways instead of stopping I just kinda forced

Overall, I’m chalking this up to a learning experience. I honestly don’t see myself wearing this shirt much, except maybe on laundry day…. But, I’m going to give things another go- maybe narrowing the shoulders and trying this adjustment, as opposed to, just grading things.  We’ll see how it goes

And more bonus knitting!  I have dubbed this my bad hair day hat… I made it from leftover yarn from a sweater project using this pattern.  I mentioned it once before, but now you get to see it actually on 🙂

Well…that’s it.  Hopefully, it won’t be quite so long until the next post and, hopefully, I will one day be able to make a top that actually fits me!