Skill Investigation: Sewing a T-Shirt

Intention

I've been interested in fashion and clothing for several years now, and the idea of sewing my own clothes has always appealed to me. I set out to use the skills I learned in Soft Fabrication skills to finally actually do it, and sew a basic shirt from scratch.

Process

I knew I wanted to make a shirt, and while looking through various fabrics in class, I realized that it could be quite interesting to make one using a sort of blankety felt. It's sort of amusingly contradictory to the idea of a short sleeve garment, to make it out of something so warm. I did some research online to find out how exactly a t-shirt is assembled; read a few blog posts, watched some youtube videos. I didn't have any large paper to properly trace a pattern on, so i just traced one of my own shirts directly onto the fabric I wanted to use. I traced out the front and back pieces, followed by the sleeves. Then sewed the front and back together by the shoulders, added sleeves, and sewed the whole thing up the sides. The most difficult part was getting the sleeves to sit properly, and I ended up adding a dart to the top of them. This mostly worked, but failed to completely address the awkwardness of their fit.

Product

The shirt was sewn using a Jenome sewing machine, making use of both a straight, and a stretch stitch. It is white, soft, and somewhat stretchy. 

Reflection

Overall, I'm very pleased with the result. The shirt is a bit too tight in the underarms and the sleeves don't sit quite right, but it's recognizably a shirt, and it mostly fits, which is more than enough for my first attempt at sewing something wearable. I've definitely learned that I ought to be a bit more careful when tracing patterns from existing clothing, as some of the pieces of fabric I cut were not quite properly shaped. I hope to further develop my skills and build more clothing in the future.

Sample Book