The Shirt - Cutting Out

I started on a long sleeve tee from the teacup fabric. When I prewashed the fabric I found out why it was $1 a yard. The washing and drying made obvious the fact that the printed teacups are not on the grain. It was such a pain to cut out, since I wanted the teacup "stripes" to look sort of straight. I pinned the fabric to the carpet and laid the pieces out all weird and slanted. I couldn't for the life of me get the stripes to go evenly across a fold for the front piece, which is supposed to be cut on the fold, so I had to make a second half out of leftover tissue paper and cobble the halves together.

The pattern is a New Look pattern I've had for three or four years. My mom bought it for me while I was in Ecuador and I had just bought a sewing machine. They don't have patterns in Ecuador. All of the women who sew clothing have learned pattern drafting, which is commonly taught in what we would call vocational high schools. I didn't use the pattern, though, because I didn't want to sew with knits. Instead, I carried it back home with me after Peace Corps and it sat in a drawer. I tried to sell it on Ebay (with two other patterns) and got no takers. But finally it is coming in handy. I did lengthen the torso of the shirt by two inches, as I am not fond of lifting my arms and having my tummy on display.

It took forever, and made me really really wish I had gotten some NORMAL fabric for my first try at sewing with knits. I think this pattern would have been a snap to cut out, otherwise. Not a lot of pieces, and not a lot of notches and circles to mark. The print still turned out a little wonky, not straight across all the pieces as I had hoped. But I think it will all work out now. It's just a sort of wearable muslin, an experiment, anyway, to see how I like both the pattern and sewing with knits in general.

The best tip for cutting out knits that I got out of my Vogue Sewing book was to pin the pieces to the wrong side of the fabric and cut them out. That way they curl less. And it's true. I cut the neck piece out on the right side, and it curled like crazy. I'm not sure why that is, exactly.

Wishlist

This necklace from 3SistersCrafts on Etsy is just beautiful. The starfish pendant is Hill Tribes silver, and when I asked her about it, Chelse told me "I contemplated hanging the piece on my wall as I think the charm is such a work of art. I was inspired by the Hill tribe Silver charm. I love Hill tribe silver, it is so original. I love the sea. I hope to one day live near it in Barcelona, Spain. I have always been a water worshiper . I live near lakes and spent many a summer day swimming in the lake at my grandparents home. No starfish there, but starfish are like the international sign for water in my eyes. " Check out her myspace page.

I like this necklace because I love starfish, and there are happy memories connected to them for me. I went to several beaches up in Maine and Massachusetts that were cold and rocky and not much fun, and never really understood why people like to go to the beach so much. Then I went to a beach in Ecuador. Warm, sandy, lots of shells and starfish. I so wanted to live on the beach.

Starfish fascinate me because when you pick them up and then put them down in the sand, you can't really see them move, but all those little hairs and nubs that cover them (if I remember my Life Science right, they're called cilia) are moving, and they just slowly bury themselves, sinking into the sand.

When Brandon and I went on our honeymoon we found some starfish, so I could show this phenomenon to him. We didn't get any pictures, though, since he dropped my camera in the ocean pretty soon after we got there. :) This is a picture I took at Canoa, a beach in Ecuador.