My husband has always liked a bit of that James Dean look, and key to it is that perfect white tee shirt. Which isn’t always easy to find. But his last few purchases have been largely disappointing (Hanes used to be a staple brand, but the last several… ugh. I didn’t know 100% cotton could feel that yugly.)
Anyway, while I won’t presume to have done better, I did want to throw my hat in the ring. I had attempted a tee for him before from the Thread Theory Strathcona, but it didn’t fare well—the fabric was wrong, the fit not right, and my attempts to hack a V neck version were either too high or too low. I even ordered some expensive cotton interlock from them to try again with a more “typical” fabric, but was too chicken to cut into $18/m fabric without a more successful trial.
Last Christmas, a friend had great success making tees for her various male family members with Jalie 2918, so I thought I’d give that one a shot. And then, like mana from heaven, my Fabricland got in a shipment that, for the first time since I’ve worked there, included actual white interlock. For $14/m, but half-price sales are a dime a dozen at Fabricland. And then I was able to snaffle up a grubby remnant—just barely enough to squeeze out a trial version. Perfect.
Anyway, I mainly just want to note down the fitting changes I made, for next time. If there is a next time.
(for the sake of both Jalie and Thread Theory’s good names, I feel compelled to mention that these changes have more to do with my husband’s personal fit preferences, as well as an unusual body type, than with the patterns themselves.)
I cut the size Y, for a 40″ chest. The shoulders are good but the rest was a bit loose.
Before anything else, I took a 1/2″ tuck through the shoulders (what I call a petite alteration when I do it for myself.) My husband, like me, has a lot of leg and a short torso for a man of his height.
I have also noticed, in altering some storebought tees for him this past year, that he likes a much higher armscye and tighter sleeve than is typical (actually, pretty much like the black shirt on the right of the pattern photo looks). So I raised the underarm a good inch as well, and took a vertical tuck to remove 1″ from the sleeve width.
The V-neck went in very nicely with the provided band piece, and that, at least, got husbandly approval without alteration (and given how fussy he is about necklines I’ll take it.)
I took in the sleeves a full 3 cm off the underarm seam (so 6 cm per sleeve, in addition to my first tuck) before the fit in the sleeve was “right”; I only took 1.5 cm off the side seam, so 3 cm per seam, 6 cm around the body of the tee. So I could perhaps go down to a 38″ chest pattern.
And that’s the story for the moment. The tee is finished and in the drawer, and at least he seems to like the fabric this time. I’m going to see how he likes wearing it (and if he wears it 😉 ) before I try another one, though.
(Did I mention that, other than the tracing, which I did back before Christmas, this took less than an hour? And that included fitting. I could knock these out SO fast if we could nail the fit…)
Tanit-Isis Sews 