Today we have a special guest, Chelsea Swindle with She Sews Seams
Hey everybody She is going
to show us how to make a T-Shirt I can't wait to show you this T-Shirt
It is really easy and really fun Let's get started
I am making this one for my son, he is a size 3T and this pattern is available
on SewingPartsOnline.com in both adult and child sizes, so go and get you one
There are five main pieces to this pattern, we have a front piece, a back piece, two sleeves,
and then you have a neckband I have already cut the pieces out,
and I want to give you just a quick tip before we jump into this project
When you start sewing a front and a back and sleeves and you get everything sort of in the mix,
sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the front piece and the back piece
My little hack for this is I take just a little wonder clip and I pin it right to
the middle center of my front piece The reason I do that is because I am
not going to be sewing in this middle section at all during the project, but
it is a quick and easy way for me to remember which is the
front and which is the back of my shirt If you really want to know the difference
The quick and easy way to tell is usually on the front of the T-shirt the neck is
going to scoop a little bit and on the back of a T-shirt it is going to be a little bit higher
but if that is something that is a little bit difficult for you to keep track of and you are
just beginning sewing just clip the front and then you do not have to worry about it anymore
The first step of this project is we are going to take our front piece and
our back piece at the shoulder seams, and I am just going to clip them with wonder clips
I prefer to use wonder clips when I am sewing on my Serger because if you cut through a pin
with your knives and your needles First of all, it could break your
knives and needles, but second, it could be dangerous if that comes up in your eye or
your face so I recommend you stick with clips when you are sewing on a Serger
Just a quick note, I am going to be doing this entire project
on my Serger and my Coverstitch machine but if you do not have those items in
your sewing space it is no big problem You can do this entire project using a
Zig-zag stitch on your regular sewing machine just make sure you use a ballpoint needle when
you are sewing knits So I am going to
load my fabric right into my Serger I am using a 5/8ths seam allowance on this project
I am going to sew right across these shoulder seams
As you can see, we are now connected right at the shoulder seams so the next step
is we are going to move on to our sleeves We are going to be putting a little memory
hem into each one of our sleeves and what this is is we are going to fold the fabric up with
the length of our seam allowance which for this project is 1/2 of an inch and then you are just
going to lightly press it so for knit fabrics, especially this double brush poly that I am using
I keep my iron at a very low setting It really does the job even without
a whole lot of heat so again we are going to use the 1/2-inch measurement and I just make
sure that it is marked the whole way across You can finger-press this type of fabric down
pretty well or just leave this on the end so that you know it is marked well
take your iron and just lightly press that little section
and that is creating a memory in the fabric so it will be folded at an accurate measurement
all the way across when we go to our Coverstich machine which is the next step of the project
So when you cover stitch you are actually going to be doing it sort of on the blind
which makes it just a little bit interesting when you are first learning how to do it
So the way that that memory hem is going to come in handy here is I have got that marked
very well on this side of the fabric and when I cover stitch it I am actually going to be cover
stitching it from the right side of the fabric When a cover stitch goes into a garment the
top side is just going to be two or three parallel lines which is the pretty side and
then the back side is going to be where you have the knit look of your thread
I have got this all loaded up and ready to go so let's take off and see how it goes
Just make sure you take your time when you are cover stitching, serging really any type of sewing
You need to take your time Watch your measurements, and keep
an eyeball on where your fabric is lining up on your presser foot so that you have
a nice even hem going the whole way across So as you can see, we have got a beautiful
little three-line cover stitch on the front side and then it caught my hem on
the backside and it looks nice and neat So we are just going to repeat
that for sleeve number two Make sure that when you are
cover stitching you do not pull on your fabric because that will create bubbling along your hem
Just let your feed dogs and your machine do the work for you
Alright is it time to attach the sleeve to the shirt
Now the way that I like to do this is if you are just beginning sewing and sleeves make you
feel a little nervous and if you look at this it does not look like it is going to fit right
So the way that I think through this is to lay your sleeve out with the garment the way that
it is going to look when the garment is sewn Right now you can see if like if there were
attached this would be a sleeve on a shirt so what I am going to do is lay this out
I marked my center point and I am going to match that up just by turning it this way onto
my garment and that is my starting point I am going to start by just clipping
right in that spot The next step is to
just work your way down one side and then work your way down the other side with your clips
You will be surprised it is almost magic how that sleeve fits right into that armhole,
so I have got one side done and now I am going to work down the other side
Once you have these matched up it is time to serge that seam so just pick up your
piece and you are going to start at one end and load it into your Serger and just
go ahead and use the same seam allowance that you have been using for this project
Okay, we have got one sleeve attached Now it is time to sew our other sleeve
We have got our sleeves attached to our garments now
The next step is to sew your side seams and your underarm seams and so to do that we are
going to start by matching up the edges of our sleeves using wonder clips again and
we are going to nest our seams at this point What that means is we are going to put one seam
going this way and one seam going the opposite direction, and it helps the fabric to lay flat
right into the groove of the seam below it The next step is to sew down our side seams
Now listen up, because this can be a little tricky When you stack these two sleeves together that
have the memory heam already built in them that is a lot of fabric to try and keep matched up
So the way that I like the begin this serge is by lifting my presser foot,
lifting my knives, and my needles, and sliding this section in as far as I possibly can to
make sure that those two edges stay even Another quick tip for this is to clip it
on the outside of your sleeve that will help keep those fabrics lined up as you start to sew
When you get to those nested seams make sure you realign things and hold onto that seam outside of
your presser foot as it goes through Just to keep things nice and steady
At the corner, you will turn just a little bit and then keep going
Here is a quick tip for when you finish a serged seam but it is like an underarm seam,
and it could be visible to the world We want to finish that thread out so that it
does not become unraveled and so that it does not stick out with its little threads once you cut it
So what I like to do is take an embroidery needle with a large eye,
and I load my thread into the needle, and all I am going to do is sew it back into
the serged threads then you're going to trim it down and when you turn it out you will see
that everything matches us beautifully, and you have no threads flying away at the seam
As you can see we have our sleeves on,
now it is time to attach our neckband At this point, you are going to want to turn your
shirt right side out and go ahead and pick up the neckband piece that
you cut when you first cut out your pattern The first step in this is we need to create
a circle because right now it is just a long piece of fabric what I am going to
do is sew a quick seam across this short end and that is going to create a circle for me
Our next step is we are going to attach our neckband to our shirt and to do this
we need to talk about quarter-points So what is a quarter-point exactly
Basically, all we are doing is we are going to fold the neckband in half so that the wrong
sides are touching and the right side is facing out, and I am going to start where my seam is,
and I am going to let it hang by my finger and that is going to tell me exactly where
my first quarter-point is going, and I am going to mark it with a clip
Let that hang from your finger and pull down on it and that is going to give
you your second quarter-point After that, hang it from your
finger again from the middle part Make sure your fabrics are even and
match up your two clips this is going to be your third quarter-point and then easy peasy
your last quarter-point is right at the bottom Why do we do this? The circle that makes up my
shirt neckband is actually bigger than the circle of the neckband that I am attaching
What that means is when I attach my neckband I am going to have to stretch it a little bit to
make it fit the shirt and what that creates is a bit of a cinch around your collar so
that it pulls in like a shirt should What we also need to do then is mark
our quarter-points on our shirt I like to use my shoulder seams
to match up first and that will tell me where my two-quarter-points on the front and back are
Then I am going to match my front and back clips together and clip it on the sides
Now this is not going to be where your shoulder seam is usually so do not just assume that your
shoulder seam is going to make up a quarter-point Because that will not evenly distribute your
stretch across the whole neckline Once we have got the quarter-points
marked on our shirt and our neckband, all we have to do is match them up this is when the
clip in the front comes in handy because I know exactly where the front of my shirt is
I am going to pick it up by the back clip This is the back of my shirt and I am going
to match that with the seam that matches the back of my neckband
So we are going to match those two clips up and remove one clip, and clip it all together
with one clip work your way around the neckband and do the same for the other three quart points
Now that we have our quarter-points all marked and all connected it is time to serge that neckband
Make sure you are following your seam allowance that was set for the project and one thing that I
need you to do when you do this is commit to your measurement, so when you are sewing around
a neckband do not change it up make sure that your eye is straight on that lined up part and that
you stick with it the whole way around otherwise you will have a neckband that has a narrow part
and a wide part and it can look like a mess So make sure you commit to your measurement
I know I said earlier not to pull on your knits but in this case, we have to pull on
that neckband to make sure it is fitting in with each quarter-point and remember that we
mark our quarter points because that is going to evenly distribute the stretch between each
of those clips so that we have a nice even and smooth neckband all the way around our shirt
Remember at this part when you have a nice long tail from your serged thread
that you want to sew those back in using my embroidery needle method
You just load it into the embroidery needle and pull your threads through and then sew them back
into your serged stitches Just like that
Let's see how this neckband turned out Did I commit to my measurement?
This is looking pretty good I think that it is turning out cute
We are down to our last step y'all We just have to hem the bottom,
so let's take it over to the ironing board and I will show you how to do that
I am going to use this iron to press this hem up one 1/2 inch all the way around and then we will
take it back to our cover stitch machine, run it through, and then we will be done
You want to make sure that when you are pressing, you are using an even
measurement all the way around your garment because remember when you go to cover stitch
this you are going to be cover stitching this from the right side of your fabric
Which means that you will not be able to see if your measurements are perfect
or not which could create a wonky-looking hem This is when these seams gauges come in so handy
They have every measurement that you could think of, and it tells you
exactly where it falls on the gauge I love this tool in my sewing room
Now that our seam is pressed up nice and neat Let's cover stitch now I am just going to run a
quick cover stitch around the edge of my garment and remember to commit to your measurement
If your fabric is running right along the edge of your presser foot for this step let it do that for
the whole way around so that it is nice and even The last step is just to trim any little threads
that may be sticking out of your project and also make sure that all of your seams were caught
perfectly with the machines that you were using and that you have cleaned up any little loose
strays that are flying around Ready for the big reveal
There you have it is a T-shirt
I think this is going to look really great on my son and I cannot wait for him to try it on