Tilly and the Buttons Frankie T-Shirt

After a bit of waffling over whether to or not I recently bought Tilly Walnes new book Stretch.  I felt like I didn’t really need an introduction to sewing with knits, I’m already pretty competent in that area, but some of the patterns looked up my alley so I went ahead and got it.  My first project was going to be the Joni dress, a fit and flare affair with a twist in the upper front bodice, but it suddenly got really warm here and I decided that a dress with sleeves was not what I wanted so I went for the Frankie baseball T-shirt instead.

I first went about trying out the pattern in some slightly horrible red fabric that I wouldn’t be sad to lose if the size was wrong.  Unfortunately it turned out fine and now I feel compelled to actually wear it on occasion even though I don’t like it!  I have no problem with the way it looks but the fabric is really shiny and think and feels sweaty and weird.  When Stu was hanging it up to dry he commented how surprisingly heavy it was for a t-shirt, it’s really very odd.

Frankie no.2, however, is much nicer.  I chose this yellow fabric, which is described on The Textile Centre website as a sports jersey because I’m in a bit of a yellow phase at the moment.  It’s lovely and soft, smooth on the outside with a loopy texture on the inside a bit like sweatshirting but not warm at all.

I had little trouble with the construction of these tops.  I pretty much glanced at the instructions, noted the order of construction and went for it.  I’m sure the directions are brilliants and very detailed but I had no need to wade through them so I didn’t really read them.  The only issue I had is that the neckline on the yellow one is a bit puckered but that mostly happened because I did my topstitching a little further from the neckband than I normally do and I will unpick it and do it more carefully at some point when I can be bothered.  It’ll do for now.  The raglan sleeves were really easy to stick in and even the curved hem didn’t give me any trouble so I’d say that this is a really easy project that can be completed in an afternoon.  I can see me making a few of these, I think it would be especially nice under something like the Pippi pinafore I made a few weeks ago due to the slightly fitted shape.

All in all this is a nice little wardrobe builder of the type I’m sorely in need of and a few of these will certainly help towards my goal of sewing some more seperates.  Hopefully the rest of the patterns in the book will be as useful as this one but I’m already pleased I bought it.