Simple sewing II

So, the first part of this post ended with me needing more fabric. If you haven't read that, then go read it now, because this won't make sense without it.

Well, here we go.

So here you go: a cheap, XXL men's shirt in a pretty light gray. Target special! It's about the same weight as the green shirt, and very soft. And huge on me, so lots of material to harvest.

7 inches off the bottom. And then there should be a picture of the gray pinned to the inside of the green--wrong sides together with the gray flipped up, because we're still going with French seaming here (I'm obsessed)--but I forgot to take one. And then they should be sewn along that pinning, and I forgot to take a picture of that, too.

You can kinda see it here, though, even though here I'm sewing the encasing seam in this picture.

Meaning I'm flipping the gray down how it should be, and sewing over that. You completely can't see any raw edges by the time this seam is finished. I love it.

Nice and straight edges--it's decorative. Which is why I used white thread, instead of matching the green. Well, that, and I don't have any sage green thread.

And no raw edges, all nice and finished. And I don't know why my thumbnail looks so weird in the first photo.

All sewn on.

This is a problem, though. I should have sewn this closed before sewing the gray strip onto the green, but I didn't think of it. Ah, well. It's all a learning experience. Totally allowed.

There's not but so much I can do and still have it lie flat. Right now I'm just concerned with making this slit no longer a slit, so I'm just straight sewing the sides together.

Raw edges. :( But it's together. Please ignore my knee. There was this bat flying around the hall, and...well, I got a bruise. Make up your own story as to how it happened.

To cover up the gross rawness, I'm cutting two strips of green, and I'm going to machine-applique them over the raw edges, folding them under the hem so they completely cover the raw edges. Lots of quirky topstitching, because, believe it or not, that's in style right now. I've got some sweatpants with a very similar feature on a letter.

So all the pieces are together now and all possibly ravelly edges avoided.

And all done!

I'm in love. it's soft. And it's not going to unravel, ever. It probably wouldn't've anyway, but my overzealous use of French seams has made it basically impossible. I'm going to have this thing until I die.

You think I'm kidding.

Anyhow. Want to see a sneak peak of the material I'm using for my next project?

:)

It's a toddler's dress shirt, and it was on sale. Beautiful, and it feels great.

I'll let you know how it turns out!