Ring around the rosies...

Had to make another raglan.  I'm in love with this Kwik-Sew pattern.  Can't get enough.  So, I set to work on yet another shirt.

34 little circles.  20 grey and 14 purple.

I fiddled and fiddled.  I arranged and re-arranged.  Finally, I came up with a semi-satisfactory design.  I edited and didn't use all of the circles, because it ended up being a little too much.  But here she is!

This shirt was easy and hard all in the same breath.  It was easy to make the shirt itself but the rosette design placement was a bit harder than I thought!  It seems so easy when you look at the cute shirts in the store but a lot goes into making it look good.  I had a bit of a time with the petals, they kept drooping and looking a little sad so I had to find a way to sew it all together to give it a little lift.  In the end, it turned out cute.   There was the incident with my sewing machine.  For some reason, it kept wanting to eat my material thus the little thread pockets on the front, blech.

But three cheers for a good try!

Aye Matey!

Lately, lil C has been into pirates.  Like, crazy.  He has the pirate chest, the skeleton, the flag, the gold and the eye patches to prove it.  He recently turned four and we did a pirate party for him.  It was a smashing success and I can't wait until next year to decorate for another theme.

So, with this in mind, I set to work making him a shirt.  A very simple raglan pattern and I traced the skull and cross bones on a piece of paper.  Voila!  Arrrrg...

He loves pirates and I love sewing.  But not so great at it, yet...

I was really pleased with the outcome and I discovered a secret!  Well, it's not a secret to those who have been sewing for years and years but for me it was a life saver.  While sewing the skull on, I placed a rather thick piece of, for lack of a better term, interfacing on the back and my fabric didn't twist and get lumpy!  Which is what I was having problems with earlier and it can be oh, so frustrating.  Jersey knit is so testy and will lump around if you don't watch it...sneaky, sneaky.

Basically, the shirt started out as just that. A shirt.  But then, I started to get bored with it and I wanted to spruce it up.  BAM.  Pirates.  What better way to make a boring shirt fabulous than appeal to the wicked side of adventure.  

Skull and cross bones. Finished.  Now the bottom of the shirt caused me some pause.  Should I hem it?  Or should I leave it unfinished?  I decided on a little bit of both.  No hem AND unfinished.

I used the vari-overlock seam on my sewing machine to give me just what I needed.

I rather like this shirt, if I do say so myself.