To a Tee

The May meeting of the Sewphisticuts took a look at T-shirt patterns.  Several members brought along a variety of patterns to share and compare.  They ranged from a decades-old McCall's pattern to a brand-new CNT design.  Both Maura and Peggy have used self-drafted Lutterloh patterns for t-shirts, while Judy has used a variety of commercial patterns from Vogue and Simplicity over the years.  Peg said she was dating herself by admitting that her first t-shirts were made from Stretch and Sew patterns.  But she was wearing one she had made from a CNT pattern, a fairly new company which she had learned about at a recent trade show.  So we saw t-shirts plain and fancy, long and short, v-neck, mock-neck and crew-neck.  We also looked at and discussed various ways of sewing and finishing these knits;  some were serged, while others were sewn with a conventional machine.  And Judy has a machine that will do a cover stitch, yielding a very professional-looking hem finish inside and out.  We discussed the merits of hems made with the blind-hem stitch vs. twin-needle top-stitching.  The blind-hem method gives a hand-picked look to the hem if the stitches show at all, while the twin-needle top-stitched method makes a more textural hem line since the bobbin thread tends to pull the lines of stitching together a bit.  We all agreed that fabric thickness and stretch make a huge difference in the fit of a t-shirt, so that fitting adjustments may be required even when you've made up the pattern before.  Some other helpful tips that we learned were:  when using a narrow zig-zag to seam knits on a conventional machine, sew a slightly wider zig-zag in the seam allowance to flatten and finish the seam allowance fabric; for unrippled hems, use a light fusible interfacing strip along the inside edge of the t-shirt, press the hem up to fuse the hem in place, then stitch the hem.  The interfaced area will prevent the knit from stretching as you sew.