shirts

Sprout Patterns, Learning with Lladybird, and Blush Pink Floral Archer

- Caitlyn

 

When Lauren announced back in April she was partnering with Sprout Patterns to do a sew-along—really, a workshop—for the Archer button-up, and that it would be held just 30 minutes from where I live, I knew I had to jump on it. The event ticked a bunch of boxes at once:

  • I’d been meaning to visit the Spoonflower headquarters in Durham since I moved to North Carolina five years ago
  • I’ve wanted to try a Grainline pattern for ages but couldn’t quite justify the purchase when I have a stash of patterns and fabrics waiting to be used already
  • I’ve thought about taking a sewing class as a way to be more social while improving my skills, but most classes are aimed at absolute beginners and tackle projects I’m not interested in
  • Lladybird was one of the first sewing blogs I started reading regularly, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to meet a sewing celebrity

Because this was the first time Sprout Patterns had done a collaboration like this, the process was a little hazy at times. For instance, there was a very limited number of spots in the class, so registration was first-come, first-served. All well and good, but when I submitted my registration through their online form, I received an email with the subject line “2018 Sprout Sew-Along with Lauren Taylor” and the sender “Confirmation Message” but a blank email body. Hmm. Did this mean that I had secured a spot, or merely that my request had been received and I was on the waiting list? Nail-biting ensues. Five days later, I received another email that confirmed I had indeed scored a coveted seat in the class. Whew, that was a relief! I assume they had to handle some portion of the registration manually and that was the cause of the wait, but a simple message up front could prevented a bit of unnecessary anxiety for those like me who did get in, and tempered the expectations of those who ultimately wouldn’t.

The confirmation email included a simple schedule (meet-and-greet on Friday night, sewing all day Saturday and Sunday), a pre-class checklist in the form of a Google Doc, and a link to video explaining how to order your pattern and fabric through the Sprout Patterns site. I confess I only skimmed the video, as the process of purchasing the materials was pretty straight forward: follow the steps to order a Sprout Pattern as you normally would and use a class-specific coupon code to get the pattern of your choice printed on Kona® Cotton Ultra with free shipping.

If you’ve spent any time on the Spoonflower site at all, you don’t need me to explain the hours I spent browsing for the perfect print for my Archer—there’s an overwhelming number of pretty, quirky, colorful, fun, bold, and bizarre designs already available even before delving into creating your own.

But I’d also suggest the severely constrained browse/search functionality on the site makes choosing a design more arduous than it needs to be. You can browse By Designs or By Color, which uses a system of categories and sub-categories, but if you select one of these you can’t narrow your criteria any further. You can do a search instead, but it’s really unclear whether this search is looking at the name of the category or categories the design is in, the name of the design itself, a set of invisible keywords, or some combination of the three. Using or not using quotation marks around your search terms does change your search results, but not in a predictable way. It’s frustrating to say the least, especially since there are plenty of models for different, successful systems.

After narrowing my favorites to around 30 designs, most of which were line art florals or dots/spots, and most of which were on a coral or blush background, I settled on Botanical Sketchbook – Floral Pink Blush by Heather Dutton. Then I popped over the Sprout Patterns site and selected the Archer pattern, View A, Size 2, and picked the design from my Spoonflower favorites. (You don’t need to browse Spoonflower first and then go to Sprout—you can browse designs directly on the Sprout site—but I found it easier to browse in the full-window view of the former as opposed to the smaller pop-up window browsing available with the latter.)

Sprout generates 2D and 3D models to help you visualize the scale of the design and determine its placement. The models are very helpful for avoiding unfortunate print placement, but the one shortcoming I see is that the pattern pieces aren’t labeled in the 2D model, so it’s possible to start dragging the print around without immediately seeing which piece you’re affecting, particularly in the case of small pieces or ones that are mostly hidden on a finished garment, such as a collar stand. In my case, I confused the pieces for the pockets and the cuffs, and it took an embarrassingly long time to figure out why I couldn’t move the large round flowers plastered over the nipples. Eventually I was satisfied with my choices, and I put the order in my cart and checked out with the coupon code with no issues.

It’s at this point I should probably mention that I felt a great deal of anxiety about placing my order, for a reason that I hadn’t expected. See, I’d received confirmation that I was registered for the class on February 28 along with instructions for ordering, and the class itself was scheduled for April 6–8. But I never actually received any guidance on how quickly I needed to place my order to allow enough time for it to be printed and shipped. The Sprout FAQ mentions that “average turnaround time for all products is 2-3 weeks,” but none of the correspondence mentioned this, or even directed students to the FAQ. I think the organizers must have assumed that everyone would want to get their patterns and fabric in hand as soon as possible, and it was never my intention to dally, but by the time I saw that key piece of information, there was a lot less than three weeks left, and I was in a bit of a panic. Again, a quick email would have done wonders here—a little “hey, if you haven’t ordered yet, you’ll want to do that soon!” would have been enough to make me commit to a decision.

Luckily, my order shipped in just two days, and since I’m in the next town over, it only took a few more days by mail to land on my doorstep. I had plenty of time to pre-wash my fabric and swing into JoAnn to pick up interfacing, coordinating thread, and basic translucent shirt buttons. In terms of tools, we were expected to bring our own sewing machines, pins, needles, snips, and so on, but scissors, cutting mats, irons and ironing boards, and sergers (for finishing seams) were provided.

On Friday night, the class gathered for a meet-and-greet with Lauren, who is exactly the person in real life that you’d expect her to be from her blog (which is something she stressed is important to her when she did her interview on the Love to Sew podcast). We snacked and drank and cut out our patterns while she chatted with us about sewing, blogging, and even gave a peek into her personal life.

Saturday and Sunday were both sewing days. Rather than do a sample project, showing us each step and then having us to it ourselves at the same time, Lauren chose to give us a short set of instructions to tackle a particular section of the shirt, and then when the first person hit a roadblock, she’d mime the steps to complete the task on that student’s pieces, folding or pointing or marking (but not sewing) as needed. If any student got behind, or needed to see the steps again, she’d walk them through it individually on their own shirt. She said she was happy to repeat herself as many times as needed, because she’d rather have students work at their own pace then be handcuffed to the rest of the class, with the speedier students feeling bored and the slower students feeling anxious. I’d say it worked pretty well: it allowed us plenty of time to socialize, observe each other’s progress, and take breaks as needed to avoid becoming tired or frustrated. (The snacks and grown-up beverages available throughout the day didn’t hurt either.)

Because our sewing time was divided up over two days and limited to about six hours each day, we ignored Grainline’s order of operations and also used a couple of alternative methods. For instance, we attached the plackets, collar stand, and cuffs to outside of the shirt and then topstitched from the inside to avoid needing to re-sew if the topstitching veered off course and failed to catch the fabric on the inside. We also used the burrito method to get a clean finish on the yoke, which I quite like.

Lauren also recommended several great tools and resources, including an expandable sewing gauge to mark buttonhole placement (always put a button in line with the apex of your bust to avoid gaping!), a buttonhole chisel, and weft interfacing from Fashion Sewing Supply. (At least, I think she recommended the weft, although the site itself advises that it’s not suitable for shirtmaking. Hmm.)

Lauren is exactly the kind of teacher I want for a sewing class: smart but not rigid, personable but able to keep things moving. I’m glad I got to take my first class with her, and hope to have the opportunity to take another class in the future (jeansmaking, maybe?)

The Spoonflower crew were also incredibly gracious hosts who were quick to offer supplies or assistance to anyone who needed them. They even made time for a tour of the facility at the end of the weekend. It’s a shame that the sew-along was the last class they had planned for the foreseeable future—the run-up to the event may have been shaky, but when it comes to day-of execution, they’re great facilitators.

As for the Archer itself, I’m quite pleased with how it came out. I’m lucky that the Size 2 fits pretty well out of the packet; the only thing I’d definitely change is bringing in the shoulders. I love the curved hem because I don’t like to tuck in my shirts. The Kona® Cotton Ultra was easy to press and sew, but it’s thicker and stiffer than I’d prefer for a button-up shirt, and I think it may be the culprit of some of the rumpling in the back. If/when I make it again, I’ll look for something lighter like a poplin or a lightweight cotton sateen. (Probably. I’m also tempted by all the flannel for fall.)

I’ll be glad to have this shirt in my wardrobe when the weather (finally) decides to cool down, but more importantly, I’m excited to have some transferable skills in my sewing toolkit. I fantasize about being the kind of slow sewist who savors the precise construction of an impeccably fitted shirt, but I’d happily settle for becoming a halfway patient sewist who can get her pockets to match and her topstitching to stay on the fabric!

Concept and Iteration

- Caitlyn

How did I arrive at a point in my life where I didn’t own a solid white or a solid black t-shirt? It’s certainly not because my wardrobe is dominated by prints—easily 90% of my clothes are solids. It’s also not because I eschew basics—I tend to buy staples like v-neck sweaters and button-up shirts in multiples, and I own few, if any, pieces I would consider “statements.” And yet here I was, lacking in the most basic of everyday garments (after underwear, of course).

The last few times I’ve tried to buy plain white and black tees, either short- or long-sleeved, I was deeply disappointed by the options available. I’m sure you’re all-too-familiar with the scene: racks of tissue-thin shirts that cling unflatteringly, bind up around the arms, and fall apart in three washes or fewer. No thanks.

I had plenty of white and black cotton/spandex blend in my stash, as well as a PDF copy of the free Tonic T-Shirt pattern from SBCC Patterns. I’d attempted the pattern before and wasn’t happy with the results, but I was determined to get it to work so that I’d have a well-fitting pattern at my disposal whenever I wanted/needed to whip up a new tee. (I also really want SBCC Patterns to work for me, because they’re specifically drafted for petites and I’d love to be able to support someone pitching my niche.)

As it turns out, my issue with the fit of the first attempt came down almost entirely to size selection. I’d sewn a small because I didn’t want the shirt to be too snug in the waist or hips, but that meant the finished bust was 1″ larger than my actual bust. Also, I must have taken my waist measurement on a day when I was bloated or something, because I’ve since re-measured at a slightly smaller size. These measurement issues, combined with a fabric that wants to mold rather than drape, made for an ill-fitting shirt that went straight into the recycling heap.

This time around, I cut out an extra-small (in white) in order to get negative ease at the bust and was much happier. To concentrate on neat, even sewing with no puckers or wavy seams, I basted everything with a zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine and then went back over everything with my serger. It takes twice as long, but it’s the only way for me to get a good finish. Maybe one day I’ll be able to zip everything through the serger without putting holes through the middle of the fabric, but today’s not that day, and tomorrow’s not looking good either.

I prefer to install my knit bands in the round rather than in the flat because I feel like I get a cleaner finish that way, and I had to cut off 1″ of the band in order to have a loop that was smaller than the neck opening. (I also prefer to sew my seams and then turn up and topstitch my hems for the same reason. So, I basically ignored the instructions and used the alternative method for every step. It worked out fine.)

With the proportions sorted out, I noticed two things: the hem has a tendency to ride up, most likely due to the amount of negative ease through the body, and the neckband was difficult to serge and topstitch down evenly due to its narrowness.

I immediately cut out another shirt (also in white), but lengthened the bottom hem straight down by 1.5″ and doubled the height of the neckband. I chose to add length at the bottom rather than at the lengthen/shorten line because the narrowest part of the shirt does seem to be hitting the narrowest part of my waist. This worked exactly as I planned, but for someone long-waisted, the lengthen/shorten line is the way to go.

I like the double-height neckband—it somehow has a more casual feel—but even with the previous alteration of shortening it by 1″ it was a little too long, and even after pressing it’s noticeably wavy. It’s no worse than you’d find in some ready-to-wear, but it’s something I wanted to fix on future versions.

With that in mind, I cut out a third and fourth shirt, both in black. For this iteration, I cut an XXS neckband instead of an XS and reduced the height of the neckband to 2 1/8″. This new neckband is now taller than the original but shorter than the doubled version, and it just might be perfect. I could probably shave a tiny bit more of the length off to get the band to lay completely flat, but I’m not sweating it.

At this point, I also lengthened my topstitch from 2.5 mm to 3.5 mm, which made the stitches a little more visible without being sloppy.

Below are the three version to give you an idea of what the differences look like in context. Black and white do not like to be photographed together like this, so the exposure/contrast is absolutely awful, but I hope it gets the point across.

Here’s a look at the necklines up close, so you can see the differences in neckband height:

One last thing I’d like to mention is that Steam-a-Seam 2 is the not the same as Dritz Wash Away™ Wonder Tape. At some point I had rolls of both in my notions collection, but I must have used up the latter on a previous project. I grabbed the Steam-a-Seam 2 thinking that it was designed for the same purpose and painstakingly applied it to the sleeve hems and bottom hem of my first t-shirt, only to realize after heat-setting it that it’s much stiffer than Wonder Tape. It seems to have softened a bit after a couple of washes, but I definitely wouldn’t use it again for stabilizing a knit hem while sewing. Steam-a-Seam 2 Lite might work for that purpose (I haven’t tried it myself), but I think I’ll stick with Wonder Tape.

I’m so glad to have these shirts in my closet. They aren’t glamorous, but they’re comfortable, and it’s nice to feel like even on an ordinary day I have something handmade to wear.

FO: Ash Ketchum

- Caitlyn

For Halloween, Justin and I like to choose a specific theme rather than going with broadly scary. In past years we’ve dressed as Alice and the Mad Hatter, Sora and Kairi from Kingdom Hearts, Agent Coulson and Agent Hill from The Avengers, and Bill and Zoe as part of an awesome from Left 4 Dead group costume. In 2016, as I was thinking back to movies and games we’d enjoyed over the previous 12 months, I decided that it would be fun to do Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I was keen on being Rey, but Justin wasn’t really feeling either Finn or Poe, and I have to admit that putting together either of those costumes would have been a lot more challenging than I was ready or willing to tackle. So after tossing out a few other ideas, Justin suggested Pokémon. He watched the show a lot as a kid, Pokémon GO was tricking motivating him to exercise more than any other activity, and it would be instantly recognizable, so he was heavily invested in the idea. I figured there were plenty of costume opportunities, so I said yes.

Justin decided to be Ash Ketchum, the hero of the story and easily one of the most recognizable characters after his Pokémon companion Pikachu. Ash’s outfit is simple, so I chose to start with it to warm up for more involved sewing. I looked for the simplest men’s button-up pattern I could find, one with short sleeves and a plain (not notched) collar and without a yoke, pleats, or collar stand, and I came up with Simplicity 8180. I cut View B in size XL but straightened the bottom hem, borrowed the collar from View A, and omitted the pocket and buttons. I also added a center back seam to mimic the character design from the show. I cut the two back pieces to include the selvage so I wouldn’t have to finish the edges—the first time I’ve tried this shortcut—and I rather like it. While it’s not the most impressive finish, it’s perfectly suitable for this kind of project, and gives you the peace of mind that the edges of the fabric won’t fray to bits while you’re handling everything.

The pattern bills itself as a 3 hour™ design (sewing time only, they are hasty to clarify on the envelope), and at the outset I would have agreed. However, when I reached the instructions for the collar—which come quite early in the assembly process—I found myself confused and uncertain. Now, I confess that I’ve not sewn a man’s shirt before, so collar construction is new territory for me, but these instructions do the sewist no favors. For example, they tell you to apply interfacing to one of the two identical collar pieces, do a bit of stitching and clipping, and then sew the facing to the collar. But they never identify which piece is the facing and which is the collar, and this matters, because your next steps involve pressing the facing and seam away from the collar and understitching. If you don’t know which piece is which, how are you supposed to know which way to press and which piece to understitch? I certainly didn’t.

I spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time trying to follow the diagrams and mentally (and physically) manipulate the pieces to figure out the correct answer, then hazarded a guess that the piece with the interfacing applied to it was the facing—a reasonable assumption, wouldn’t you agree?—and quickly discovered that this is not the case. I was able to unpick and re-sew without needing to cut new pieces, but it was a time-consuming stumble that could have been avoided with a single line, or maybe even just a few words, of additional explanation.

Fortunately, the collar came out looking pretty good anway, although I wish I’d remembered to stitch across the corners rather than pivoting at the corners to get a sharper point (a tip that I think I first saw on Melly Sews).

I didn’t particularly like the way attaching and finishing the collar intersects with sewing the facings for the front opening. It was bulky, awkward, and I feel like there are raw edges lurking just in the wings, waiting to pop free and unravel. I suppose the construction is probably due to the lack of collar stand, but surely there must have been a better way? It makes me want to sew a proper man’s shirt with stands and plackets and no raw edges in sight.

For the front opening, I subtracted width from the front shirt pieces and the facings to meet in the middle instead of overlapping. I interfaced the facings according to the instructions, and I pinked the free edge before folding under and stitching.

For the snap, I simply drew a square extension with seam allowances on the right front and right front facing to accommodate a Size 24 heavy-duty brass snap. I installed the snap using a basic snap setting kit and hammer. Although cutting into the finished shirt made me anxious, hammering in the snap pieces was great fun and very satisfying—I heartily recommend it.

In hindsight, I wish I’d further reinforced the snap tab with an additional layer or two of interfacing. I fastened the snap one time to make sure it worked, and was a little afraid that I’d tear the fabric before I could separate the halves again. Luckily, Ash always wears his shirt open, so the snap doesn’t really need to be functional. (But it did need to be a snap, not a decorative button. I was adamant about that, much to Justin’s amusement.)

The bottom edge of the shirt is finished with self-made bias tape. In order to effectively conceal all of the raw edges and not cause issues with the front facings laying flat on the inside, I treated it like a reverse bias facing, attaching it to the inside and then turning the bias tape and the raw edges to the outside, machine stitching it down, and polishing it off with a bit of hand stitching where needed. Up close, the yellow fabric is a bit sheer and the raw edges are visible through it, but at a distance it’s unnoticeable. The faux pockets were made by stitching down strips of the same self-made bias tape.

Some final notes on the shirt:

  • The instructions don’t call for it, but I flat-felled the shoulder, sleeve, and side seams because I’d never done it before and I wanted to try something new. I like having another seam finishing technique in my kit, and I look forward to applying it to future projects.
  • The sleeves are a standard set-in style that requires easing, but not an excessive amount. There’s a pattern piece so that you can bias bind the seam allowances, but this seemed unnecessary; I serged them instead.
  • The blue fabric for the shirt is a Kona cotton; the white fabric for the sleeves is a mystery flat-weave cotton (purchased broadcloth? recycled bedsheet? who knows); the yellow fabric for the bias tape is a cotton broadcloth.

I’m quite pleased with the finished shirt—it looks exactly like Ash’s from the original show—but I cannot recommend the pattern I used. In addition to the issues with the collar, the instructions never actually tell you to sew the front and back pieces together at the shoulder seams before instructing you to attach the collar and front facings. While it’s not impossible to figure this step out—those seams are clearly sewn in the illustration for attaching the facings—it reinforces the impression of a lack of attention to detail in the instructions. Perhaps the pattern writers, pressed for space as I’m sure they were, were streamlining the instructions and removed a line by accident. But if space was at such a premium I think I would have nixed the boxer short pattern, which to my mind doesn’t make a lot of sense with a shirt and tie pattern anyway, in favor of more thorough shirt instructions. In the future, I think I’ll use a pattern like the Fairfield button-up from Thread Theory, even if it means I need to eliminate stands, yokes, and/or pleats myself to get the styles lines I want.

As for the rest of the costume, the jeans, t-shirt, and belt are, not surprisingly, things that were already in Justin’s closet. The gloves were a convenient $3 find in the checkout line during one of my many (many) trips to JoAnn; I cut off the fingers cut and melted the openings with a lighter to prevent unraveling. The soft foam Pokéball came in a three-pack from Toys-R-Us.

Ash’s hat is entirely Justin’s handiwork. After I failed to order a hat in time for Justin’s office dress up day, Justin took matters into his own hands and downloaded a free ball cap pattern. What I didn’t realize was that he grabbed the first pattern he could find, which happened to be designed to make paper hats for beer bottles. So, itty-bitty. With my help, he was able to scale it up to human head size, and then to his head size, which is about two inches larger than average. He cut the pieces out of craft foam and glued them together, and then cut out the symbol and attached it with double-sided tape. I wanted to butt the cap seams together and stitch them up on my sewing machine, but we were tackling this project in the hour before we both had to work, so that didn’t happen. He didn’t mind though. Turns out craft foam doesn’t breathe at all so that gaps provided some much-needed ventilation.

Justin was over the moon about his costume, and with the positive response he got from everyone at work and who visited us on Halloween. If you want proof, here he is showing off in between handing out candy to trick-or-treaters:

Next up, my Pokémon GO trainer costume!