Ages and ages ago, when I very first started sewing I would spend hours and hours browsing Pinterest looking for some of the neatest looking clothes that I could figure out how to hack. Some of them I tried and others I just pinned and waited.
Well, I recently received some beautiful fabric from
Whisky Tango Fabrics with the challenge to "make it unique!" Raven wanted us to make stuff that stood out from the crowd, something with a little bit of a twist so that people would stop to take a closer look.
I am not very good at standing out. I like to go with the crowd. It's easier that way. I also really like solids! So when I opened my package and found tie-dye stripes I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. What on earth was I going to make with tie-dye stripes?
Rayon Spandex and absolutely beautiful, but definitely not a solid 😂 This was going to take a lot more creativity than I thought.
The other two fabrics, equally as beautiful, were a yard of this amazing turquoise chiffon and 1.5 yards of white geo shapes on stretch mesh. I knew exactly what I was going to make with the mesh! But more on that in another post.
The chiffon and the tie-dye stripes coordinated beautifully! They needed to be sewn together, but how exactly?
This pin, from years and years ago, popped into my head and I knew it had to happen!
Now, I have to give credit where credit is due. This adorable hack can be found over at
Peekaboo and it is different from mine, but this is where my idea originated. I just didn't know it even existed. Shame on me, but the photo on Pinterest didn't have a link and I didn't do a reverse search until I wanted to write this blog post and wanted to credit the right person for the idea and the photo. So, please go over there and take a look! You wont be sorry!!
My beautiful little niece, Jenna, is modeling for me! This whole tutorial is based on her shirt, but I made one for her mamma too.
Using the
Ellie and Mac Unisex Raglan as the base, I traced out the front pattern piece in Jenna's size onto tracing paper. Set the original pattern piece aside for the moment before cutting it out in ivory cotton lycra along with the neckband. I also cut the back and sleeves out of the rayon spandex tie-dye stripe.
Now to finish our piece on the tracing paper. We aren't quite done with it yet.
I traced out the changes in black to make them a little easier to see. I added 1.5 inches to the fold so that there would be some fabric to gather at the neckband. If we didn't add this fabric, the chiffon, being a woven would give the neckband no stretch and it would be near impossible to go over Jenna's head. Now I tell you this now, I wish I had added closer to 3 inches, not for any reason in particular, but I would have liked to see more gathering at the neckline. What I did was find, but I think it would look more fancy to have had more, that's all.
Now at the bottom of the pattern piece, I want the hem to be curved a little, so I added 1 inch to the middle and then curved it gently back to the side so the bottom of the chiffon would hang down past the middle of the shirt front. (If you have spotted my error, please leave it for everyone else to find as I expound on it a little bit later)
I started by sewing the sleeves to the back of the top. Here you see the sleeve attached to the back bodice. See how beautiful the tie-dye is? Sorry, my photos are such a mess!
Next, I serged the raw edges of the chiffon, and this is where I realized the mistake I made. Notice that I didn't realize what I had done until it was completely serged? Yeah, I have no idea how I missed it, but it makes me laugh to think about it.
Yep, I drew the curve on the bottom of the pattern piece in the wrong direction! Thank goodness I had enough chiffon left to draw it again!
I just simply trimmed off the incorrect curve and taped some paper to the end and redrew the curve an inch down, just like before, only this time I knew it was going to be correct.
Okay, now after messing up, I finished serging the chiffon raw edges and then hemmed all bodice pieces. The pattern calls for a half-inch hem, so I just folded up the cotton lycra hem and the rayon spandex hem half-inch and topstitched them down. But for the chiffon, I tried a little bit different approach. Chiffon can be a little finicky and kind of likes to slide, especially against its self, so I serged the edge and folded it over twice on the serged edge and then topstitched close to the edge. It looks really great and the extra stitching gives the hem just a little bit of weight.
The next step is to gather the neckline. There are lots of different ways to gather, check out this
blog I wrote for
Eunoia if you would like to learn of some great ways to do it, or you can just pull up the middle straight line of stitching from the right needle of your serger and gather that way. I was going to do that, but I didn't get close enough on one part of the neck and that middle thread isn't in the fabric, so I can another line of stitching through the middle of the serging line and I used that to gather.
Then comes the hard part, making the gathering match the length of the original neckline. You can, and probably should baste it together. I didn't, but I like to live dangerously 😆😈😇😂
At this point I went ahead and sews the sleeves to the front piece, making sure I caught the chiffon while sewing. And then went ahead and finished the side seams too. Look at how good this is looking! I am just tickled that it looks so good!
And with the addition of the neckband and a quick hem of the sleeves, we have a complete top! Yay! It turned out so good! Even though I kind of wish there had been more gathers at the neck, I am very pleased!
And here we have Miss Jenna and her mom, Heather in their finished shirts! They turned out better then I could have dreamed they would!
And here they are together! Awww, so sweet! Jenna was not happy about having to get up and take photos, she was much happier on the ground kicking and playing and watching.
The base pattern for Heather's Fancy Raglan is the
Runway Raglan from
Petite Stitchery. It's a beautiful pattern with some very fun sleeve and shoulder details. The only thing I did was cut the unchanged front and back bodices with a straight hem and the chiffon overlay on the curved hem and cut the chiffon to be 1.5 (again I wish I had done more like 3) inches from the center fold and added about 4.5 inches of swing to the chiffon with a cut and spread method. I am very pleased with how Heather's Runway Raglan turned out!
Photos could have been a little bit better, but that's what you get when you forget to change the dead camera battery and have to use your crappy little phone on wiggling targets. Oh man, I have so much fun stuff to show you from my photoshoot with my brother and his family. This is just the tip of the iceberg!
Tell me, when was the last time you were so confident in what you were doing that you made a whole lot of little mistakes? This whole endeavor, even though it turned out well, was a small series of little mishaps that kept setting me back in my confidence. All in all, it was a good experience and I hope I can remember not to be quite so overconfident next time.
The links provided in this post may be affiliate links where I receive a small commission from your purchase at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting me, my blogging and my sewing!
