It's Alive! It's Alive!

You may remember my Rosie tee that I tried to frankenstitch last month. Well I picked up the sad remains again last week and literally had it wadded up holding it over the garbage pail when I had a change of heart. At first I thought maybe I could salvage a tank top out of it. There was not enough fabric left for sleeves or even to be long enough. It would be great if I were 30 years younger and could get away with a shorty top. Once I brought it back to the sewing room I had an epiphany - what if I could match a colour from the pic and make sleeves in that!

Off to the fabric store I went. I had my heart set on the yellow but couldn't find a good match in a solid when I ran across this yellow camo. It was perfect! I used New Look 6735 again and had literally just enough fabric for the bodice as long as I was ok with using the camo to get the length. There wasn't even anything to cut off on the sides in a couple of places as I laid out the pattern. This would have been so much easier if I had just used a pattern from the get-go rather than just pinning and serging at will as I originally did. Ah well - lesson learned.

I spent a crazy amount of time on this top, mainly because I am really trying to improve my techniques. I sewed and then serged the camo to the bottom. Then I was at a loss as to how to hem it to look appropriate. I tried using Sergio to do a blind hem, but it looked terrible. Then I unpicked that and tried using a test piece of fabric to try a blind hem with Betty. The generic blind hem foot I recently bought kept pushing the fabric just out of the way of the needle (not the adjustable part of the foot but the actual metal base) so that wasn't going to work either. I suppose I could have tried to carefully do a blind hem with a regular presser foot but frankly that didn't occur to me until today. So I decided to hand-hem the bottom and sleeves. This was a long process using a tiny catch stitch. This turned out to be a really good choice because it leaves me with a nice tidy hem with a lot of stretch and no popped stitches when I pull the top over my head.

The verdict? I've ended up with a one-of-a-kind tee that I will proudly wear again and again. One win for me!









Comments

Stars Threads said…
Love this! Great job on the remake.
12:07 pm
The Winter~Queen said…
This is fantastic! What an awesome idea! I could use this for an over sized tee (as that was the only size available) I bought for myself but then never wore. Thanks for sharing this, your top is awesome :)x
5:59 pm
Jacqui said…
Thank you both! I too end up with a lot of oversized tees. I'll have to put this in the "do it again" file.
12:51 pm
Anonymous said…
Fabulous remake. Love it!! Perfect fit. You rock!!
12:51 am
Susan Fogel said…
Love your Rosie tee, and the yellow camo is perfect!
Good save.
9:59 am
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