Raglan T-Shirt Pattern - Part 2 (mini tutorial)

Remember this shirt, with the wavy armhole?

Well, I was kidding myself that even the chubbiest baby would be able to pull off that hot mess of an armhole. I started to seam rip to take it apart, but that proved to be more than I had patience for. So here’s how I fixed it.

First, I trimmed off the sleeve binding on both sides. I cut as close to the stitching as I could. Since this left less fabric on the armholes, I now needed to add some fabric back or risk this turning into a tank top instead of a muscle shirt. So I decided to do the same finishing I did on the original Squirrel Shirt.

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with this method the first time, because as you can see it added fabric width to the armholes, and they look a little like cap sleeves. Just goes to show you how important a quarter inch can be in a clothing pattern.

However, with my freshly trimmed armholes, adding width is exactly what I needed. So I cut two strips of fabric 1 1/2 inches wide and as long as my armhole, and ironed those in half with wrong sides facing so i had two 3/4 inch strips. Hint: if you upcycle t-shirts, you can carefully cut off the hem of a sleeve or the bottom just below the stitching line and you will get 3/4 pieces already creased for you.

I sewed the short ends of the strips together, then turned them inside out and pinned them onto my shirt, which was right side out. Like this:

I zig-zagged very close to the raw edge (no room for serger trims here, I’m running out of fabric). Then, I flipped the sewn edges to the inside of the shirt, and on the outside did another small zig-zag topstitching very close to the seam, but on the shirt, not on the edging. This was to tack the zig-zagged edge down so it wouldn’t be tempted to flip outside while Bean was wearing it. Like this:

And when I was done it looked like this on the outside

And this is what the whole shirt looks like now (I promise the waviness below the armholes is not sewing, just being in a hurry when I took the picture and not smoothing the shirt down. I was so focused on getting a good shot of the armholes I neglected to look at the rest of the shirt)

And this is what it looks like on Bean:

Pretty cute, even though he didn’t want to cooperate for pictures.

You might also notice that I changed the color of the armhole binding. That’s because I ran out of the gray, but I actually like how it looks with the blue better. I may use two colors of binding on the next one I make on purpose. But I will definitely follow instructions next time.

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Comments

Jessica at Me Sew Crazy says:

July 25, 2011 at 1:21 pm

Lol – I remember when I first started sewing with knits, everything came out ‘wavy’. I just called it lettuce trim. hahhaha – great job fixing it up Mama!

Melissa says:

July 25, 2011 at 2:24 pm

Thanks for looking! Yeah, lettuce trim on boys doesn’t work so well, though…

Raglan T-Shirt Pattern – Part 2 (mini tutorial)

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