Lavender Tee

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the National Sewing Circle Garment Sewing Challenge. In this video, I'm sewing up the Mood Fabrics pattern, the Lavender Tee, and I'm going to be talking about some general tips for sewing knits. We'll have a little bit of a focus on sewing the neckband of the tee and there's a pattern hack on the Mood Fabrics blog, moodfabrics.com, to do a cross-front sort of wrap panel hack on the pattern, which is super cute and that's what I have done to my T-shirt. So we'll be talking a bit about that, as well. And if you want to alter your neckline at all, I'll be going over some tips on how to do that and what you need to change. But if you are just sewing the Lavender Tee as it is, I'll still have some great tips on the pattern and on general knit sewing, the needles and threads, anything different that you need to do there. So, we'll start with the pattern. So if you want to do that wrap front hack, let's go through that real quick. So here's my shirt front and I did change the neckline. I taped it back on so that you can see that. But so if you just cut out your pattern and you want to mark this wrap front placement on your pattern, we want to go from this, you can see at that upper edge of your neckline and measure down seven and a half inches along the center front and make a mark there. And then you want to make another mark 18 inches below that upper point, your center front upper edge there. So seven and a half inches and then 18 inches. And that first mark, that seven-and-a-half-inch mark, you're going to draw a straight line to connect that over to, there's your arm hole notch. So you're drawing a straight line to connect that to your seven and a half inches. And then this 18-inch mark down here, you're gonna draw a straight line connecting that to the waistline mark. So there's a little waistline, just a little line on the pattern. You want to transfer that, when you're tracing off the pattern, you want to transfer it to your shirt, too, when you cut it out. I just did a little clip at that little mark. Just clip in about a quarter inch to mark that placement on your pattern pieces 'cause that's going to help with alignment. So you have a straight line from that waist mark to your 18-inch lines. You have two lines on your pattern and you're going to want to trace that off on a separate piece of paper. So you have your line here, little bit of a side seam, little bit of your arm hole. Make sure you mark that notch on your new pattern piece, as well, this line and your center front. And it ends up looking, I drew a little mini, so it ends up looking like that. Here's your arm hole. Here's the center front. Now, to get that pattern piece to go all the way across the body, you need to extend those lines. So you need to, since this is just a straight line, extend that line out and you want to take your bodice pattern piece again and flip it over, aligning your center fronts so that you can trace in that side seam. So you end up getting a pattern piece that looks like this. So this is this. And then when you flip your bodice over it and align the center fronts, then you get your lines going all the way across the pattern piece. And make sure you transfer, I got that waist marking on this side of the pattern, as well. Make sure you transfer that over. Then you want to add your half-inch seam allowance to the upper edge and the lower edge because that's where we cut off the pattern. We are using half-inch seam allowances in all areas of this pattern. So you want to cut two pairs of this pattern piece and on the blog post, they go through how to put the right sides together, stitch the upper edge and the lower edge to get your panels and then you baste those into the front, so you get your wrap on the front. And on the blog, she made her pattern shorter. So she sort of cut it off here because her tee is shorter. I wanted to make my tee nice and long, so my wrap front goes all the way down to the bottom and I don't have both my side seams stitched yet, so the wrap panels are a little bit saggy, but when I get my side seams stitched, it'll make it nice and sturdy. There will be a little element of drape to it, but it won't be this drapey. But the wrap front panel goes, for me, it was all the way down, almost all the way to the bottom. I have enough room for a three-quarter-inch hem on the bottom, but my wrap panels went fairly low. So I wanted to mention those measurements for the wrap front panels, just those measurements for drawing that pattern piece. So, when you get all those pieces cut out, you have your wrap front panels cut out, turned right side out and pressed, and basted along the side seams. You wanna make sure you've matched your waist markings and matched your notches for the arm holes. So those get basted in. And then what I did is I stitched the shoulder seams first and then I inserted my sleeve. So you can see, there's my sleeve. It's inserted and I left my side seam open. And I did that because I like inserting my sleeves in the flat, so when the side seams, the lower edge of that sleeve seam is not stitched, it's a flat seam, essentially, whereas if you were to stitch the lower edge of your sleeve and the side seam, and then set that sleeve into the armscye, your armscye is essentially a circle so you're stitching it in the round and sometimes it's a little bit difficult to work in the round like that. So if you leave it open and flat, it's a lot of times a little bit easier to get in there and see what is happening and then you can stitch this all in one go, stitching the sleeve seam, the sleeve underarm seam and the side seam all at once. So that is what I did on this side. So my side seam is stitched over here and I will show you when we get there what that looks like to stitch that, underarm seam and the side seam in one go. But first, I told you we were gonna have a focus on the neckband, so let's do that. So you can see that my neckline, I have fused a knit stay tape. This is not necessary, but I find it super helpful in helping that knit neckline keep its shape because the neckline is, parts of it are on the bias so we don't want things stretching out of place and when you're stitching with your stretch stitch, which is either a zigzag stitch or a triple stretch stitch and you're kind of stretching the neckband to ease everything in, sometimes things can just get stretched out and when things are stitched as they're stretched, sometimes you'll get, you know, those wobbly seams. So I've found this stay tape helps prevent that. It has stretch, so it will stretch with the fabric, but it just snaps everything back into place. And this is the brand that I use for that. This is SewKeysE Fusible Knit Stay Tape, half-inch wide and it's very, very fine, so it's very flexible. It doesn't make your neckline stiff at all. It's just for stabilization so that your fabric doesn't buckle under your stitches. So, like I said, not necessary, but I find it a super useful tool. And I think it's especially probably not necessary for this fabric because actually, this fabric I'm working with is the Mood Fabric Bamboo Stretch French Terry. So the wrong side has this really delightful, soft kind of backing to it, and it's really quite stable. It sews like a dream. It's got some amount, so there's bamboo and cotton and spandex. So the edges do tend to roll. I don't know if you can see that. It does want to roll toward the right side, which can be problematic sometimes, but on this, I actually didn't find that it was too terrible to work with. You know, it just took a little bit of extra time to make sure that those edges were flat and not rolled up when I was cutting. So it wasn't too bad to work with. A lot of cotton knits will do that. They will roll. This wasn't too bad and for the stability of the fabric and the great hand and drape, I would absolutely work with this again. So, great fabric. So, the neckband is what we were talking about. So I have fused my stay tape and my shoulder seam is stitched. Now, the neckband pattern that's provided with the pattern goes, you know, with each size of pattern, but if you want to alter the neckline at all, you will then need to alter the neckband. So, on my pattern, I'll just take the tape off. I increased the depth of my scoop by two inches. So here's what that looks like if I take this off. So now my scoop is just two inches deeper here. So I brought it down two inches and then I just sort of true to that curve back up before we reached that shoulder seam. So it just gives me a little bit deeper because this pattern, the neckline is sort of high and I wanted that to be a little bit deeper. So, to get my neckband pattern to fit this new scoop neckline, because the neckline is now longer because I brought it down, what I did is I marked my half-inch seam allowance along the neckline and I measured that using my flexible measuring tape, measured my seam line, not including this seam allowance here. And then you multiply it by two because this is only half, so you get the other half of the front scoop and measure the back neckline, as well, times two, added that together. So that was my seam line for my front and back and then I multiplied that by 0.8, so I'm essentially taking 80% of that measurement. So, the neckband, you want it to be a little bit smaller than the neckline you're setting it into. If it is too big, you get a neckband that sticks up and kind of sticks away from your skin rather than lying flat to your shoulders and flat against your collarbones, so it looks a little more like a Mandarin collar that just sticks straight up. So it needs to be smaller than the neckline in order to lay flat. So, 80 or 90% of your neckline measurement is usually a good place to start for a neckband measurement and then make sure you add one inch to that for your seam allowances after you take the 80 or 90%. So since this fabric is real nice and stretchy, I took 80% of that measurement, so I made it about 20% smaller than the neckline. And then I stitched it to be a circle. So I fold it in half, stitch the short end. Then I trimmed that down by about half to take some of the bulk out of that seam line and that seam allowance. And then I fold it in half with wrong sides together. Now, we need to quarter mark, and that's what these pins are. So since we have a seam at the center back, it's really easy to get the center front. You just fold your circle with the seam line right at the back and then at half of that, that's your center front. And then you take that center front pin, match it to the center back seam, and those two edges you get are your remaining quarter marks. And we quarter mark the neckband and we're gonna quarter mark the neckline so that we make sure we're easing that neckband into the neckline evenly so you don't get, you know, some more neckband over here. It can just cause things to shift and be weird. So it's a quarter marker neckline. And on the pattern, you have your center back notch and a center front notch that you want to make sure you transfer to the garment by cutting it either into the seam allowance or out of the seam allowance. I like doing it out. Just, it makes it easier for me to see. So I'm taking my center front and center back notches and matching them and then I match those raw edges, making sure not to stretch it. And that place where it folds, that is my quarter mark. And it's not going to be at the shoulder seam because the front scoop is deeper than the back so your shoulders seam isn't going to be your quarter mark. Your quarter mark's gonna be to the front of the shoulder seam. So there's my other quarter mark. There we go. Now, we want to match, and we're doing this, I like to sew on the neckband so I can see what I'm doing. So I'm matching the neckband to the right side of my shirt and you're matching your center back of the shirt to the center back seam of the neckband. And I'm pinning on the neckband, so that's, I'm stitching with the neckband facing up. And the neckband, as I mentioned, is going to be smaller than the neckline. So when we stitch this, we're going to have to stretch the neckband a little bit to match the neckline measurement. Also important to note, when we're stitching knit fabrics, I like to use all purpose thread. You can also use 100% polyester thread. Those threads have a little bit of give to them. It's not a stretch thread. It doesn't have stretch, but if you stretch the seam and it gets to the end of the stretch that you've built into the seam, that thread just has a little bit of extra give so you won't snap your seam immediately like 100% cotton thread might. And when you're sewing a seam like the neckline that has to stretch over your head, you want to build stretch into that seam. So, like I mentioned, we're using a stretch stitch, either a zigzag stitch or a triple stretch stitch or a triple step stitch, which is what I'm going to use, which is essentially two stitches forward and one stitch back. So that one stitch back is almost like a really tight zigzag stitch and that just builds more thread into the seams so that it can get stretched and that thread will open up and stretch out and allow that fabric to stretch without popping your seam. So, making sure my seam allowances are open, my shoulder seams. You can pin in other places if you want, but I'm just going to have my quarter pins and there's not a lot that I need to stretch. The neckband is only slightly larger than the neckline opening. I'm gonna pin right here. So I have my all purpose thread. I'm gonna do a triple step stitch and I'm using a ballpoint needle, as well. I always recommend a ballpoint needle when you're stitching on knits. It will help just make everything go smoothly. It helps minimize skipped stitches when you're sewing on knits and it helps to increase the longevity of your garment, just by treating the knit fabric better. All right, and I'm using a half-inch seam allowance. I'm gonna take this off because I have a little bit of a narrow opening I'm stitching. I like to start at the center back, just to make sure everything goes smoothly and if I have any issues, it's kind of hidden at the center back. So once I get my needle down in the center back here, then I can start just gently stretching, just stretching that neckband just enough to match the neckline opening. And I'm holding in front of and behind the needle and I'm just putting gentle tension. You don't want to pull so hard in front of the needle that your fabric has a hard time going under the foot. And I stitch a little bit and then I kind of pull that back around to the front. Make sure my seam allowances are lying open. Now, if you have altered your neckline so much that it's widened at the shoulders and the scoop is so far down that you don't have to stretch it at all to get it over your head, you don't necessarily need to stich this using your stretch stitch if it doesn't need to stretch over your head. But if it does need to stretch at all, you want to use your stretch stitch. Make sure my edges are aligned and make sure I'm not stitching any tufts in fabric as I go around this curve. And here's my center front. And sometimes you will get a wonky, kind of wobbly seam when you're stitching with a stretch stitch on knits and, you know, you might be discouraged, but sometimes just a good steam with your iron will straighten that out and get rid of some of that wobbliness. And if you don't have this fusible stay tape but you're getting wobbly seams that won't steam out, tissue paper is always my next suggestion if you have tissue paper leftover from gift bags or scraps from a commercial pattern, put it under your seam and that oftentimes is enough to stabilize that seam and help you not get a wobbly seam. So there's my neckband and I would press those seam allowances downward so that everything lays nice and flat. So there's my neckband. It's looking nice. I think that it will lay nice and flat against my shoulders, and especially when I get that pressed. That's going to help. And I will probably end up top stitching, top stitching those seam allowances down. So I'll have a line of top stitching right under that seam to hold those seam allowances down and also just because I like top stitching. I like that look. You can top stitch with a twin needle to get double lines of top stitching and top stitching with a twin needle is nice because it builds in stretch. You get that straight stitch look on the front, but it's a zigzag stich on the back between the lines of straight stitching. So that's a great option. So I have a lot of stretch in my neckline and once that is pressed down, that's going to be perfect. So, the next step after pressing and top stitching, if you want to, would be to stitch the side seams. So I have done this one so that side seam is stitched. I'm gonna stitch up this side seam real quick and because it is a vertical seam that doesn't need to stretch around the circumference of my body, I can just use a straight stitch for that. And I've already pressed my hem allowance on my sleeve and my lower edge and I did a half-inch hem on my sleeve edge and I did three quarter of an inch on the lower edge. You can kind of play that by ear, customize it if you want. If you want a shorter sleeve, you can turn that up an inch and have an inch hem allowance, give yourself a little bit of a shorter sleeve. You can also, if you want a very short sleeve, you can just trim some of that off at the pattern stage if you want just 'cause it's just a straight line. You can take off as much as you want to make it a shorter sleeve or when you get to this stage and you decide you want it to be a little shorter, you can either cut it off here or just turn it under and give yourself a deeper hem allowance on your sleeve. It's also a little bit of a different look for when you're top stitching your hem. If you have a deeper hem, it's just a little bit of a different look. So when we are stitching our side seam and when we're stitching over this, the point where our sleeve meets the side seam at the underarm, we have kind of a lot of bulk because we have our sleeve, our shirt front, and then we have two extra layers of fabric in that wrap front panel. So I am gonna trim a little bit of that out. I'm gonna kind of grade it, grade the seam. So I'm gonna cut it short on top. I'm not gonna cut them all the same height because then that still gives me some bulk. I'm gonna grade them down. Just right there, where they join. Okay. I'm also going to nest the seams 'cause I do have bulk, pushing one one way, one the other. You can press them open. That will also work just fine. And now down here, I have my, you can see that little notch in my fabric. That was my little clip that I clipped at the waist marking. So there's the point that you want to match up and the lower edge. And I'm just gonna put a straight stitch on my machine and we're starting at the sleeve underarm. I'm gonna pivot right here a little bit to stitch using my half-inch seam allowance. And I was a little bit afraid doing this cross-front panel pattern hack, that it would get real bulky right here where those panels wrap, but this fabric, it has a heaviness to it, yes, but it's not like thick and heavy. It just has this delightful weight to it without being bulky. You want to make sure as you're sewing that you make sure this fabric isn't like falling off the table or anything. Make sure you're not stretching it as you sew. Just kind of guide it through. Let the feed dogs guide it through without stretching it. If you have a walking foot, sometimes that can be helpful, especially because we do have, especially where those wrap panels wrap over each other, we have quite a few layers of fabric. So to keep them from shifting, a walking foot can be super helpful. I have a dual feed foot on this Pfaff machine, which I always have engaged. That helps feed my upper layer at the same rate as the lower layer so nothing gets, there's no creeping happening. My edges here at the bottom want to curl, so I just want to make sure that's nice and flat. Okay, and there is my other side seam. I'm probably going to end up wanting to trim out some of this bulk where those wrap front panels cross 'cause that's, like I said, a lot of layers. Let's turn that right side out and take a look. When you turn it right side out, make sure your wrap front panels are still against the front and not in the back. And there's my sleeve, all stitched up. And I'm gonna want to press that seam, as well. And when it's on, it won't be so baggy. But I like that kind of drapey look of those wrap front panels. Now I have my sleeve. This is turned under half an inch. And like I said, my lower edge is turned under three quarters of an inch. And to hem those, to top stitch that down, I'm going to use my triple stretch stitch again to make sure that there is stretch since the sleeve hem is going to get pulled up over my arm and the lower edge is going around the circumference of my body, so as I'm pulling it on and wearing it, the length is kind of down around my hips. So I want to make sure I have stretch in that seam, too, so that will stretch around my body and wear nicely. So with my half-inch hem on my sleeve, I'm going to triple stretch stitch at about three-eighths of an inch. And then on my three-quarter-inch hem on the lower edge, I'll probably do a half-inch hem on the bottom with my triple stretch stitch. And that will finish off my Lavender Tee. It was a really easy pattern to print off with a PDF, really a nice basic shape and it has a good fit and that wrap front pattern hack was super cute, as well. So I hope this video and these tips help you in sewing up the Lavender Tee and help you in this Garment Sewing Challenge.