I went shopping, which I thought would be mostly window shopping, but I ended up purchasing some skinny jeans and a knit shirt.  The shirt fit well, but after a bit of soul searching and price tag gazing, I decided to take it back.  I mean…I can make that for much, much, much less. *sigh*  Such is the life of the seamstress.  We won’t pay good money for things we can easily make ourselves.

Thusly, my two shirts were born out of my seamstressy plight.  I actually used the RTW shirt I had purchased to make a template.  I did have some patterns that would have worked, too, but it was there.  It is a super simple one-whole-piece-for-each-side pattern.  I just really liked the length, which wasn’t too long and  blousey, which just makes you look pregnant. 

First is the white one, made with a nice featherweight knit.  It is super comfy and I embellished the front to make it all fancy.  I used four strips of fabric at 3″ wide and about 12 inches long.  I ruffled them up and placed them on the shirt.  I sewed them on with a straight stitch (one at a time) and then I sewed a few buttons from my vast “heirloom” button stash in the flowers.  Then I wore it to work the next day, since I am all about instant gratification.

Next, is my scraptastic version.  Seriously, I had to sew pieces of fabric together to get it finished.  A good use of scraps, though!  This took me the longest since I had to piece all the fabrics together to get them to work.  I exposed all of the piecing seams just to give a bit of visual interest.  They won’t unravel, as this is a knit.One of the color blocked sides is made up of 3 pieces I had to sew together.   Cute, right?  Yes, more of the teal-ish fabric.  Yes, I do like it very much.

Then we have some t-shirts for Kailan.  They didn’t turn out absolutely fantastic, but he loves them and that is what is important.   I used a long sleeve pattern to make them and had to make a few adjustments en route.  They aren’t the best sleeves in the world, but he is a 6 year old boy so I doubt he cares.  As you can see…excitement!  He also has almost a full mouth of teeth here, which it has since broken through and is on the way down. 🙂

I used the novelty fabric for the sleeves and a plain solid or strip for the body.  I didn’t want them looking like jammies.

The fabrics are a mixture of regular cotton knit, cotton-lycra knit, rib knit and french terry.  Just a mish mash, and I really was just trying to match colors.  The first top is froggies with a really dark green, next is vroom, vroom cars with a stripe, next is an animal print with orange french terry, and lastly is an outback tours pattern with a cotton lycra knit.  He has worn one each day after I made them.

That’s all for now!