Inspired by a pin: Ruffle front T-shirt

I've had in the back of my mind for a while now a shirt tutorial that I pinned (via my sister) for a ruffle front shirt. When I was documenting my stash last year I also mentally allocated a piece of white knit fabric to the project. I finally managed to make my shirt last month, and I'm making the most of our dwindling warm weather (goodbye summer, I'll miss you, but not the extremes of hot weather you bring), to wear it as much as possible before I have to start layering up so you won't even know what shirt I have on!

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I didn't refer back to pinterest at all when I went to make this shirt, so it sort of evolved in my head. I also found that I still had to play around with the design even after I'd made my pattern, as I ended up being very short on fabric, so the sleeves are actually cut on the warp, not weft as I would normally do (ie I cut them parallel to the selvedge) and much narrower than I had originally imagined. I don't think I would have liked them to be any longer though, so it all worked out in the end.

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As I was looking around to find my original inspiration photo to share with you, I found another shirt that I had pinned, and realised I was probably influenced by this one as well when I came up with mine. (Notice the embellishment is mostly centred between bust points?) It's a good thing that I didn't look back at that tutorial before I started my shirt, I quite like it too, but there was no way I would have had enough from this piece of stash fabric to do that! Maybe next time though.

For my shirt, I took my trusty stretch shirt block (mine is based on a standard size 10 stretch block that I have been modifying bit by bit to get the perfect fit for me), and inserted a seam in the front just to the side of the bust line. Then I cut 3 strips of equal length, 1.5 times the width of the front panel. I overlocked and hemmed the bottom edge of the strips. The bottom two are simply sewn straight on where they sit, and the top row I stitched on right sides together, and flipped the strip down to hide the raw edge.

I also wanted to experiment with my new coverstitch machine (I haven't told you about that yet, have I?), so I used it around the neck edge and for the lower hem. It seems to be a bit temperamental, and has a habit of missing stitches, but not so much that you notice. For a first use, it seems like a good addition to my arsenal of sewing machines. If I had thought to take step by step photos I would have been a tutorial together for this, but I didn't, so I hope you can follow my ramblings above if you wanted to do one yourself.

Temperamental cover stitch machine loves skipping stitches!

I love how this neck edge turned out with one line
of stitching on either side of the seam

Don't you hate it when you find something wrong with your fabric after you've put in all the hard yards sewing it up? I found this hole (left photo) just next to one of my seams, so I did a bit of an ugly a thorough repair job so the hole wouldn't get any bigger. Ugly, yes, functional YES! When it's on, you don't even notice.

Sorry about the shadows in my photos, it was a very hot day and the photos with me squinting into the full sun were even worse!

What was that? You're asking about the skirt I'm wearing in these photos? I'll save that for another day's post.