the quirky shirt

My favorite t-shirt is a baby-blue, flared tank top with a large and looming skull screenprinted on it.  You read that right - an enormous skull speckled like a Lichtenstein in hues of oxblood, charcoal and black. It has white ribbed armbands, shredded jersey accents and a sweet little bow right at the neckline. If you can imagine a Japanese pop princess going to a Sex Pistols concert, then you almost have a mental picture. It's a great shirt. ...if you can put aside the slight psychotic undertones.

Craig doesn't like.

Fine. I get that. I'll admit that when I come to the party I'm decked out as a harbinger of death. But the thing about it is this:  it is the most comfortable shirt that I've ever owned. It isn't stylish. It doesn't show off my body. It does little to flatter me, quite the opposite actually. It is madly comfortable though, and for that it is a winner.

For Craig's sanity, I decided to see if I could make the same shirt in something a little more endearing to him. I swung so far in the opposite direction that I found myself using a kids' printed jersey cotton with waves and sailboats. It might be too quirky, even for me. I picked it up yesterday at Spotlight and stopped into Remnant Warehouse today to get a suitably odd, contrasting burgundy ribbing.

Not long ago, I wouldn't have had the confidence to sew up a knit, let alone reverse draft the pattern by myself.  I think Meg Elwee's explanation of knit types in her Crafty class bolstered my confidence.

I reverse engineered the pattern from my favorite shirt which worked out fairly well. This was my first time working with actual ribbing fabric, so it took a few goes to work out how short to make the neckband. Like my skull shirt, I omitted top stitching around the neck and armbands. The finishes aren't perfect. Considering I made it on a domestic sewing machine, I think it's good enough. No one sees those finished except me anyway.

I love making quilts and small zakka projects, but there is something extremely satisfying about sewing clothes for yourself... however simple... however quirky.