Popsicle T-shirt — Victoria Martinez

Way, way back, maybe last January or February, Matthew and I started on making him a t-shirt. You see, this popsicle print from Kapynen was just too wonderful, and I ordered enough to make Matthew a shirt, with hopes of a little leftover for Cuss.

Matthew set about tracing a t-shirt he liked the fit of, adding seam allowances, cutting out and sewing a muslin out of some polyester dresses I’d gotten from someone’s clothing purge. The muslin (which Matthew put together entirely) fit pretty dang well, so we proceeded to cut out the nice cotton lycra jersey. Matthew did all the stuff himself. It was going well and I was excited to get him sewing.

Then he tried on the shirt, and the shoulders had weird bunches at the top of the shoulders. I didn’t know how to fix it. He mentioned he’d had to to stretch the sleeve to fit armhole, and the whole idea of it intimidated the heck out of me. Periodically I’d think about learning to draft sleeve caps, etc. But mostly, I was too scared to work on it.

This continued until December, when my confidence inexplicably shifted while looking at the popsicle shirt in the mending pile.

I walked the seam allowances of the pattern pieces on each other, and they fit beautifully. So I layed out the unpicked shirt on the pieces, and lo and behold the shoulder angle had been cut just a bit off- but enough to significantly change the length of the sleeve cap. I honestly couldn’t believe the fix would be so easy. So I trimmed the shoulder and re-sewed, since Matthew was pretty done with this project (who could blame him, honestly).

One shoulder still felt a little off, so we pinned out a better angle and fixed that seam. Then it was a t-shirt. For the neckband, i used the trusty (2 × N) − (0.0349 × W × A) equation from Grow your Own Clothes, but I just measured the full final neck seamline (effectively measuring 2N rather than N).

I have to say, the back of the neck still bugs me a bit and I think there’s something a touch off about cotton lycra for a men’s shirt - it’s clingier than preferable. But this shirt is done! And… it was the very first project I managed to finish in 2019! And Matthew looks good in it anyway! Yahoo!

Pattern: Copied from a t-shirt
Size: Medium
Fabric: Black and white popsicles from Kapynen
If there is a next time: I didn’t keep the tshirt pattern we traced, as I’d rather find another one. Round back adjustment might be in order.