T Shirt Tuesday - Au Bonheurs Asymmetric Tee

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and survived Black Friday as well as Cyber Monday.  I have been working on my Christmas Decorations so for today's T Shirt Tuesday I thought I would feature Shams from Communing with fabric .  This T is so cute and goes along with my post of last week on color blocking! 



  

Here is some of what Sham's had to say about the pattern: 

It's sad that this company is now out of business, but I know some folks do have their patterns. This one goes up to a size 46, though the finished bust measurement is 41". This is not nearly enough for my 48" bust. However, I have recently worked out that in stretchy tees, I like a finished bust of 44", or about 4" of negative ease.

I needed an FBA, as usual, and decided to try a new-to-me technique, the pivot-and-slide FBA. You can see it explained on the Sharon Sews blog. I pivoted the top 1.5". This worked well at the side seam, but had an undesired effect in the armsyce by making it too wide. I will explain how I fixed that in a bit.

As I traced off the size 46, I straightened out the extreme waist shaping, as I do not have a tiny waist, and I removed the extra hip width, as I have narrow hips.

The top features asymmetric cap sleeves, which are very cute, especially on Dorothy, but I do not wear cap sleeves. I decided to take the sleeves from the Style Arc Adele top that I recently made. This meant that I had to transfer the armscye from the Adele top to the Au Bonheur top. This took care of the unwanted width added from the pivot-and-slide FBA and also narrowed the shoulder by about 3/4". Another good alteration for me as I narrow the shoulders of most patterns.

Go to Sham's web site to read the rest of her post!

Happy Sewing,
Michele P

PS - let me know what you think by leaving a comment or click a box.

Welcome Back T-Shirt Tuesday!

I am so happy to have a T-Shirt Tuesday Project!  I have been in a T-shirt funk of late and have had no inspiration until today.  I have been motivated to make a color block T.  These Ts are a must have Fall 2011trend.  You can find them at every price point.

Here are a few that have inspired me:

Here is my interpretation of the color block T

Start by using two long sleeve Ts.  I purchased them from my fave Target on sale last year.  Play around with the color block. 

This was my first try.  Ultimately I decided that I wanted just two blocks rather than three.

The Final design with only two blocks

Once you have finalized the block design, put the two Ts on top of each other and cut your blocks.  You will note that the mustard T is a turtle neck which goes to show that you can use any T you find.

Next, cut the block from both T as they are stacked. 

Cut the sleeves at the same length as the body block to create a line the goes across the body and sleeves at the same point.

Now sew the two block together and you should have something that looks like this:

I thought this was a little too plain for me so I took some of the left over mustard and made a large bow.

I used the entire width of the T and cut it about 3+ inches.

Fold the strip in half with the seam on the end.  Place a rubber band the color of the T (if you have one) about 3 inches from the end to make the bow.

Add to T and walla designer color blocked T for about $3!

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment or click a button.

Happy Sewing,

Michele P