Kirsten Tshirt

When I went for my first visit to Catwalk Fabrics and bought the fabric for My Oslo, I also fell victim to the attraction of a khaki linen knit. I've not worked with too many knits and never with linen but once I had picked this up, I wasn't going to put it down 😊. It sat in my stash for only a little while before I figured out what I wanted to do with it. It's almost exactly the same shade as a tshirt I have which is nearing the end of its life. I contemplated copying a pattern from it but also rifled through my patterns. I remembered that I had downloaded Maria Denmark's Kirsten tshirt. So now I had a plan just no time to make it.

And then last weekend, a window of opportunity opened. A quiet afternoon with uninterrupted access to my sewing machine. Yippee!  I chose the large size and glued the paper together to make the pattern and then decided to overlay my old tshirt over the pattern to check the sizing. I was surprised to see they are almost identical. I'm glad I didn't copy the pattern myself! I decided on using fabric as the neckline ribbing.

Whilst I was waiting for the pattern pieces to dry, I thought I might read the pattern (novel, I know). I'm really glad I did because I learned that Maria uses different seam allowances depending their function (no allowance for the neckline, 1cm for seams and 2cm for hems). No seam allowance at all! Not something I'd done before but I went with the flow. I cut it out using my shears and pattern weights. I was worried about damaging the fabric with pins. It took about 15 minutes - three pattern pieces only.

I tried something else new too. A new stitch. I'm still getting to know my "new" sewing machine. And I've barely used the stretch stitches. I stitched all the seams with a triple straight stitch. I'm impressed. It works. I also used a twin needle to finish the sleeve and bottom hems. I was worried about this stitch, especially since the linen is so fine (skipped stitches? No!). I love the dual feed - go Pfaff!

This also fits the August MAGAM theme of basics and it's not the only one I made. Stay tuned...