New Look 6216 (again)

With half an eye on MMMay I thought it was time to break out New Look 6216 again and make a couple more basic t-shirts. The grey one I made last year is still one of my favourite things to wear and I think these 2 will get a lot of wear too.

When we were at the Knitting and Stitching Show last year my sister bought some fabric to make her own version of this pattern. Because it looked like she was never going to get round to it I offered to cut out the pieces for her and while I was at it I thought I may as well cut out some fabric for one for me too. I figured that way we could make them together so I could demonstrate without actually messing with her project.

I bought this stripy blue fabric with this particular pattern in mind and I'm really pleased that I did. The stripes themselves are really sheer and slightly sparkly making this shirt a little bit fancier than your ordinary tee. Despite being very careful not to do so I managed to cut the back out slightly wonky so I was worried that the stripes would make that really obvious. I didn't quite have enough fabric to cut another back so I just left it and it looks just fine. My sister's T-shirt turned out nicely too, I'll have to see if I can get her to send me a photo to show off.

My second version was originally going to be another Briar tee, but in the end I decided I wanted a really, really quick project to complete while the fabric for my next project was in the wash. Obviously Briar is hardly a time consuming project but this doesn't even have sleeves to sew on and I already had the pattern out so it seemed even quicker. Of course it all went a bit wrong, but you can't plan for that unfortunately.

To make the project even quicker I thought I'd try adding a hem band, eliminating hemming and creating a cleaner finish. In principal this was a good idea but I need to fiddle with the length of the band a bit next time because it didn't look great. No biggie, I thought, I'll just cut it off (I'd overlocked it and I wasn't unpicking) and the shirt will just end up a little shorter. So I started to cut and got distracted by something or other.... insert your own toddler disaster of choice here... and had to go back to it later. Upon resuming I couldn't seem to find where I'd started cutting despite looking all the way round until I realised I'd have to look further afield and discovered I'd actually cut halfway around one of the sleeve bands. Oops! So I had to lop both of those off too and then sew them back on again before actually cutting off the hem band and hemming the bottom.

The end result is slightly shorter than planned, with slightly shorter sleeves and a wee slim sleeve bands but it looks much better than I'd feared. The fabric is the real star here, it's super glitzy and also really soft and squishy. It all worked out in the end, thankfully and now I have two more t-shirts to keep me from wearing nothing but Lady Skater dresses for the entirety of May!