It’s absolutely freezing in London and I really need more long-sleeved knits, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to use this pattern from KnipMode Dec 2005 with a yard of rose jersey from Fabric.com and some of my gorgeous cream stretch lace that I bought in Paris. Et voila! A raglan-look lacey long sleeved teeshirt (Lace but without the Brrrrrr!).
This is a really basic long-sleeved teeshirt pattern, but with lines drawn in from the neckline to the side seams on the front and back. I left off the weird cuffs (in fact, I just reused the sleeve from my drape-front dress because I’m lazy like that and don’t see the point in tracing an identical sleeve again!), and decided to create my own neck binding which I serged on and then coverstitched down.
Recognise my Thames jeans? The wool bobble hat is from ASOS, and totally necessary for a 3:30pm photoshoot where it’s already getting dark and the thick frost is still on deck from that morning!
Now I know not many people have this five year old Dutch magazine pattern just lying around at home, but this is such a simple pattern that you really can make it yourself! Take any basic teeshirt pattern (BurdaStyle’s Lydia pattern is a great pattern and at $1, I guarantee you’ll get your money’s worth!) and draw a line on the front and back pattern pieces from mid-neck to somewhere between the underarm and waist. Cut along the line (and remember to add seam allowances along the line if your pattern uses them), and use a different fabric for the shoulder pieces than the rest of the shirt. Just make sure the points in the front and back match up at the side seams!
I actually used the rose jersey as an underlining for the lace here, so I really needed the two layers to stick together. To make sure I had a smooth time when I got to the overlocking, I actually hand basted the lace onto the rose jersey for those shoulder segments. It took a bit of extra time, but not any longer than it would take to unpick a bunch of overlocking should it bunch up and distort without the basting!
I could totally see myself using this basic pattern for small amounts of knits to highlight a plain teeshirt like I’ve done here with the lace. Spoonflower are having BOGOF on fat quarters this week, and I could definitely see the point in splurging some of their organic cotton knits in a drop-dead gorgeous print that could coordinate like this with a nice solid. You’d get the expensive look, but with a cheaper body fabric overall! You could even use an existing teeshirt for the body and use cool shoulder fabric as an excuse to reconstruct it!
It is seriously cold in London right now, record lows down in the minus teens at night (approaching zero Farenheit), and we’re struggling to get our living/dining room above 8C/40F in this weather! So this was a very, very quick photoshoot with frozen hands and nose!! And how funny is it that Dawn and I bought the same fabric?