One Hour Top.

Having sworn that I no longer wish to wear t-shirts the obvious move for me is to make one. Because I'm contrary. I'm pretty pleased with this, even though this picture did make me exclaim with horror about my um assets. I'm standing like that so you can see the batwing element of this t-shirt and have now made a mental note never to stand in this position again unless I wish to slightly scare someone. Still, sewing is supposed to be all about coming to terms with your body, isn't it? Actually I have much further to go in the department of coming to terms with photographs of my body, which also explains the lack of head. I'm wearing no makeup and my face bears the wrinkles of the pillow I just removed it from, so headless photos for you it is.

Do I look like I need the loo?

Back to the pattern. It's a freebie from Fancy Tiger Crafts. I was between sizes and my hip measurement suggested a large, but  I had a moment of genius and measured the bottom hem of another t-shirt which indicated a medium should be OK. It was a lovely easy sew, and probably would have taken me an hour only if I hadn't spent at least an hour staring at (swearing loudly at) my machine manual trying to work out how to do a stretch stitch. It turned out that the answer was 'stop sewing and read the manual again when you haven't spent all afternoon struggling to write an essay', because it was actually very simple: change the stitch width. The fabric came from the Woolwich Market man, cost £2 a metre and is probably synthetic. It's the kind of thing I would never in a million years buy to wear because usually I am scared of patterned lest I end up looking like a sofa cover. As it turns out I rather like the pattern which is pleasantly autumnal and I even seem to have centred it successfully. I carefully used a ballpoint needle to zig zag the seams after the thread kept breaking when I used the stretch stitch (didn't work that one out, just gave up on it). I had terrible troubles with the zig zag dropping stitches until I changed back to a normal needle. I'm a bit stumped by this, it could be the tension but I tried changing it several times and it still dropped. Fortunately by the time I got to the neck I'd changed so that bit looks reasonably OK, and the rest is mainly black so doesn't show much. I also used some Steam-a-Seam as recommended by Karen from Did You Make That? which did indeed make the hems much easier. With luck it'll also counteract the dodginess of the dropped stitches.

I shall be making another, I think.