Fast forward to a couple of months ago. I found a pattern called "Oversized Boxy T-Shirt" and it was labeled for beginners. I bought it. This is the style of Tee that I love and I'm definitely a novice.
I ordered material, I watched some videos that said to wash your knit fabric before cutting it out, so I did that, and then I printed out the PDF pattern, taped it together and cut out my pieces. Everything went well.
Wow, maybe I really can do this!
I wasn't able to start sewing because the pocket is supposed to go on first and I needed fusible interfacing which (of course) I don't own. That came in on a Monday, but I was too tired to attempt anything until last Saturday.
This is where my problems started. I must have cut the pocket out a little bit off because the point wasn't in the right place and I couldn't get it to fold down right even after I ironed it. I had this brilliant idea of snipping a little Vee with my scissors--and accidentally snipped into the pocket. :-(
I do have extra material, but I didn't want to go through all the fusible interfacing steps again and the pocket is optional, so I decided to proceed without it.
To say my sewing was less than optimal would be understating it, but at least everything was lying smoothly and that's all that mattered to me. Besides, I was figuring things out as I sewed and when I make a second shirt, I know I'll do better.
I was nearly finished. All I needed to do was put on the collar and hem the bottom and sleeves.
This is where I ran into big trouble.
You see, my beginner sewing pattern doesn't have enough explanation for this beginner. As in I have only sewn masks and nothing else since I was 13 years old or so. I watched YouTube for the pocket and I should have watched YouTube for the collar, but I thought it couldn't be that hard, right?
Oh, yes, it could be that hard. I ended up with puckers and slips where I didn't catch the material. Instead of stopping to regroup, I just sewed those spots again. And again when I still had problems.
Yeah.
I watched a YouTube video that was very helpful on how to put the collar in and realized I needed to take out what I'd done and start over. I found a seam ripper in my sewing kit.
Here comes problem two. I had thread that matched the fabric as close to exactly as you can imagine. The stitch I was using on my sewing machine sewed teeny tiny little stitches. My seam ripper is some cheap piece of junk tossed in a sewing kit. So 1) I could hardly see the stitches to begin with and 2) the seam ripper has a pretty wide point, wider than the stitch, so getting it under to slice it is hard.
And I kept sewing over spots multiple times. Sobs.
This is where I sit right now. I've been searching online to see if there's an easier way to get tiny stitches out, but apparently not. There are, however, finer point seam rippers, which it appears I'll need to invest in.
So no T-shirt and I'm frustrated right now. I did learn a valuable lesson, however. Watch videos and don't assume anything is easy.
