I could do with some new t-shirts to replace some old and worn ones and since I am very happy with the fit of the Lady Skater dress I decided to turn the bodice into a t-shirt pattern.

The shoulder seam tends to shift backwards when I wear my Lady Skater dress so I moved it forward on my t-shirt pattern and I think that this is an improvement as it now stays in place. This is an adjustment that I need to do more often so I am a bit surprised I missed it earlier.

The bodice of the dress finishes around the waist so I needed to extend it to t-shirt length. To do this I used the t-shirt pattern from the Craftsy Sewing with knits class. At first I simply overlapped the two patterns matching at center front or center back and the armpit (more or less, obviously they didn’t match completely at the latter). I then simply merged the side seams of the two patterns, making sure that they would be the same length on the front and back pattern pieces. In the end I ended up taking the t-shirt in quite a bit because I wanted it to be more fitted than the sewing with knits pattern was.

When trying it on I found the hem too long but I think I was a bit too enthusiastic when I chopped the excess length off. My next t-shirt will be longer.

Overall I am happy with the fit and the matching of the stripes turned out pretty good as well. The seams were sewn with my overlocker but because I was working with a stripe I first machine basted the seams that needed pattern matching to ensure a good match. This did make the process longer since I essentially had to do those seams twice but unpicking overlock stitches to fix shifted stripes would have taken even longer.

I was very lucky to find this fabric at a fabric market last week. I was looking for stripes but most of them were the wrong colour or very narrow. I had almost given up hope on finding a suitable one when I spotted this fabric hidden at the bottom of a huge pile. I quickly realised it is exactly the same type of fabric as a grey/purple stripe I bought a couple of years ago that is very comfortable to wear. Unfortunately, the vendor only had 1.2 m left on the bolt and only this colour combination. Otherwise I would certainly have bought more! I don’t wear a lot of bold prints but I do love a good stripe.

I see many more t-shirts in my near future. In fact, I’ve already started cutting out another one. I also want to play a bit with different necklines to add variety.