More T & T Fun

T & T patterns fascinate me. They're the blank canvas of fashion sewing. Within their tried, tested, and true framework, there's the potential to go in endless directions. Fun! An expert on working the T & T is Carolyn of Diary of a Sewing Fanatic. If you haven't already discovered her blog, you'll be amazed at the different permutations of her T & T dress.




This is the same T & T pattern that you saw on Monday only this time, I've used a V neckline and the gathered sleeves from McCall's 6164 with a 1" petite adjustment to the cap to fit my shortened armhole.

T & T patterns take a while to develop. I think you need to sew a pattern at least a half dozen times to become familiar enough with it to get the basic shape right. After that, you can start playing with the obvious design aspects like neckline shapes and shorter or longer sleeves. And from there, things get more and more exciting. If only in your dreams, and the intimate reality of your studio, you are a fashion designer. YES YES!

Raglan sleeves don't typically look good on my bottom heavy figure. The diagonal seam line makes my shoulders look even narrower and the rounded shoulder seam looks droopy and unstructured as did the dolman sleeve shown Monday. HOWEVER, I'm intrigued by the idea of small ruffles on the sleeve cap and a raglan sleeve is perfect for that application. The ruffles would add visual interest and width making it more applicable to my body type. First, I need to know the pattern fits so I'm making a basic raglan t-shirt to wear under sweaters this winter. My theory is, if it's ugly, it'll be covered.



I don't want to reinvent the "wheel" so I'm combining New Look 6977 with my T & T pattern. The 6977 pattern has excellent reviews on PatternReview.com. Everyone chose highly recommend although that's somewhat irrelevant in my case because - as you can see - I'm not really using the pattern, just the design lines.

The blue lines above are the front shape of my T & T pattern. The pink lines are the front shape of the New Look 6977 pattern. The front of the New Look pattern contains the necessary extra for the front gathering. The front of my pattern contains the easing for the bust. It's in the side seam between the underarm and the waist. To copy the 6977 design lines to my T & T, I aligned the center front and the underarm seam on both patterns and traced the armhole and neckline shape.




Typically, I make a 1" petite adjustment through the armhole and sleeve cap. This pattern is no exception except that the sleeve cap is the armhole as well. The curved line of the tissue with the single notch that you see on the left above is the shoulder seam of the New Look 6977 pattern. Through the paper, you'll note that it extends one inch past the shoulder seam of my T & T pattern. The adjustment is vertical as opposed to horizontal, almost parallel to the straight of grain line on the sleeve front and back.




None of the reviews mentioned the width of the neckline as a problem however, I have quite narrow shoulders. In this image, you can see that the neckline would be way over by my bra strap. That seems too wide. It's easier to add width now and take it off if I don't want it than it is to wish I had it later.




In this step, I've both narrowed the neckline and extended the armhole seams. If I follow this pattern, the neckline will be as wide as it normally is with my T & T pattern. If I want to make it narrower, it's simply a matter of taking off more fabric in the width, but not the depth, of the neckline.




Above, I've used a French Curve to merge the design lines of my T & T pattern with the extended design lines of the New Look 6977 pattern along the front neck. I've also marked the two dots for the front gathering and the length of elastic to use. Even if I widened the neckline, this aspect would not change because it would be width not depth being altered.

I planned to take this t-shirt along on sew-cation as the third project and then felt like sewing last night and now it's done. Just before I cut out the sleeves, I thought better of the short cap. They're not flattering to my bicep and, since I was already using a raglan sleeve which is also not flattering, it seemed like a double no-no. I used the McCall's 6167 sleeve to make the length adjustments.




To sew the neckline, I serged a long strip of binding right sides together with the garment, folded it over to the wrong side, and then stitched it in place before trimming away the excess. This time, I used a double needle placing the left needle in the ditch of the seam and the right needle on the binding. It worked fabulously.

And here's the finished t-shirt. Like before, it's black so you can't really see the details. There's something a little bit wonky about the curve of the shoulder. I'm not sure if I'll play with it or not because I prefer a set-in sleeve but at least I know what to do. It's good and enough to wear under a sweater and after I give it a wash, I'll see what I think. All of these black t-shirts are slightly less black than I'd like. I'm debating dyeing them. Has anyone done that? What did you think? What dye did you use?

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - confidence to design

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Personal Growth - Virginia Woolfe wrote, "Across the broad continent of a woman's life falls the shadow of the sword". On one side of that sword, she said, there lies convention and tradition and order, where "all is correct". But on the other side of that sword, if you're crazy enough to cross it and choose a life that does not follow convention, "all is confusion. Nothing follows a regular course." Her argument was that the crossing of the shadow of that sword may bring more interesting existence to a woman, but you can bet it will also be more perilous. - page 93, Eat Pray Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert