A simple sewing project for me to play with

Useful and ornamental needlework, knitting, and netting are capable of being made, not only sources of personal gratification, but of high moral benefit, and the means of developing in surpassing loveliness and grace, some of the highest and noblest feelings of the soul. -Author unknown, from The Ladies' Work Table Book, 1845

Yeah. That's why it's perfectly okay for me to sew instead of doing my homework. It's benefiting me morally and ennobling my soul.

That's an excuse I could really get behind. "Well, I'm sorry, Dr. Mitchell, but I couldn't do your long and boring reading. I was occupied with developing some of the highest and noblest feelings of my soul."

(In a perfect world, she'd say "Oh, wonderful! Then you're exempt from the rest of the readings for the semester, and I'm giving you an A."

But we don't live in a perfect world.)

Anyway.

Last weekend was a bit of a lonely time; my roommate went home; one suitemate had her boyfriend over; the other went to see her boyfriend in New York; one friend from my hall just started dating a close friend of mine not from the hall (so they spent all their time together); one hall friend went home; one had his parents, sister, and aunt and uncle over; one had her boyfriend over; and two went out Friday and Saturday, so I didn't see much of them.

I really like being alone, but there is a limit. And passing the limit makes me feel like a sad friendless loser from high school, and that makes me unhappy, because it reminds me of actually being sad and friendless in high school. Unhappy doesn't look good on me and I possess by virtue of being a female teenager a great deal of vanity. Obviously, then, I had to do something about the whole only-person-on-this-godforsaken-hall-without-a-friend/boyfriend-visiting depressed thing.

SO. Amongst vast gobs of homework, I decided to drown my sorrows out by spending some time with my Friendly Fabric Friends. (And also by drinking hot tea and eating dark chocolate, which is a process that automatically divides any and all sorry feelings by three.) This Friendly Fabric Friend thing might call for some explanation, as fabric is not precisely easy to come by on campus--it requires a trip to Hobby Lobby, which requires money, which I don't have. Plus, Hobby Lobby closes at some decentish hour like 9, and I sew during the wee hours of the morning. No actual fabric, then. But--but but but BUT--I do have old clothes. Last time I sewed, I made a doll t-shirt from an old white cami of mine that had (it didn't turn out perfectly, mainly because I had never really sewn with knits before and it was very, very thin and stretchy, but it was good practice), but this time I felt more like making something for me.

Mainly, I just wanted to try out French seaming, and I wanted to test it out on something bigger than a doll garment. On Liberty Jane's pattern site (http://www.libertyjanepatterns.com/), there's a video posted about how to make French seams that I stumbled across while browsing aimlessly through the pretty dolly clothes.

And I fortunately had just the right test subject!

(NOTE: Photo comments are below each photo.)

This is a shirt. It is a huge and ugly shirt, and it knows it. This picture makes it look even uglier, because I ran autocorrect on it in Photoshop, and something happened, and I thought it was funny so I left it like that.

See, kind of like a tent. I wear it to bed sometimes but never anywhere else, because it's a men's XXL, and I'm a women's small or medium in t-shirts. Because it's so large it hangs awkwardly, not really long enough to be considered a nightie but obviously gigantic. Cut it some slack, though--it was on sale at J. Crew for about $5 a year ago, and that stuff's high quality. And soft.

I'm going to cut it down and make it more my size. And I'm going to tell you all about how I did that, because even though none of you probably care or need instructions, I feel the need to show off. And I like pretending to be like my favorite bloggers, with their step-by-step photos. When I was taking these photos, I even narrated the entire process aloud, pretending I was a combination of the Pioneer Woman and Lucy from Attic24.

And now you can pretend I didn't just tell you that.

So, the first step is to model Mr. XXL around a shirt that actually fits me. This pink shirt is my favorite ever, and I've had it for a long time. In light of that, please forgive the sweat stains. I would like to explain it away by saying that I wore that shirt on the day I took these photos (which is true), but they're actually permanent, mainly because besides being my favorite t-shirt in general, it was especially my favorite t-shirt to wear over my leotard at dance. So here's the good shirt over the huge shirt. I'm pinning an outline around the pink, leaving an inch or so for seam allowances.

And trying it on. Look, I have gills! A little too tight, though, so I'm letting it out another inch on all sides, and then cutting off the excess fabric. It needs to be a little loose to allow for the funny Frenchy seaming I'm going to be messing with.

See, all cut out. If you could not critique my weird pose and odd nightwear combinations here, that would be great.

This is how French seams work: first, you stitch a seam on the right side of the garment. So all the raw edges are going to be on the outside, which I know sounds completely backwards, but hang on just one more step. Here I'm using about a quarter inch seam allowance. I'm also very slightly stretching the knit as I sew the seam, which helps it lay flat and makes it less likely for the thread to break when the shirt is manhandled later in life. This was a revelation in the art of knit sewing for me.

Here's a better photo for you.

Ok, this is why you have to leave extra room for this type of seams. I'm going to turn the shirt inside-out now, and sew all the seams AGAIN, overtop the first ones. But this time I'm using about a half inch seam. Get it? The second seam is enclosing the first, putting all the edges in a neat little, raveling-proof tube. There's what it looks like from the inside.

And now it fits. :)

This step is unnecessary, but I have a completely irrational dislike for the little threads left over at the end of a seam. I think it's because I always end up with way more than any normal person, as my sewing skills are actually not that great, although they're improving with practice. Even if they're cut, the threads sprout off like those little hairs on onions, and so they need to go away, because onion hairs are nasty. So, I thread the ends (which I leave long intentionally) onto a needle, and poke it up through the tube created by the French seam, snagging the fabric a few times and taking a stitch or two to secure the tail right in the ditch of the seam, where it can be cut short without a) coming undone or b) being visible.

Look, final product! A nice, no-raw-edges seam. Nothing to tickle my ribs, nothing to unravel. These photos are, obviously, of the inside. The outside looks perfectly normal. Nice, huh?

You probably think I’m finished now. But no, because I don't need another t-shirt. I've got plenty of those. I want a nightie, goshdarnit. And to do that, I need more fabric, because the 2-inch skirt length thing is really not my style. However, this blog freaks out if I put too many pictures in one blog post, so I'm going to upload another immediately after this one, explaining the second part of this project.