Theme Sewing - Oliver + S Raglan Tee

You know what I really like about the Stashbusting Sewalong?  It's that they let me sew whatever I feel like. Which is good cause, "this bird you can not chain."  But Emily and Cindy are smart and know that sometimes a sewcialist might need a little inspiration. So they come up with a stashbusting theme each month that you can chose to sewalong with.  Half of the time I blithely ignore this and go on cutting out fabric while singing, "I did it my way."  "Regrets, I have a few, but you can't tell me what to do...," wait I don't think that's how it goes.

Annnnyway, this month the theme was sewing for children and you know what, I have a child! Also a smallish stash of children's fabrics that he'll grow out if I don't get cracking. I was most concerned about a cool space invader print that was only a 26" x 24" piece.  Since good boy knit prints are hard to come by, I'd snapped this wee piece up two years ago. It needed to be sewn up and quick!

Enter Oliver + S Raglan and Field Trip Cargo pants.   I made the pants for my nephew last Christmas and had a sewing disaster that forever scarred me. (Cut hole in almost done pants. Then had to rip out a shit ton of top-stitching to replace panel. It was black on black top-stitching...at night...in November.")  Just seeing the pattern made me want to hiss and yell, "The power of Christ compels you!" Thankfully I pulled it together and remembered that A- it wasn't the pattern's fault and B- we're just doing the easy knit shirt this time, so chill Heather, chill.

Desmond is currently wearing 3T, so I went with the 4T size for more growing room.  I also checked the pattern against some RTW 4T shirts and decided to add 1" of additional length to the shirt.

My original plan was to use the space invaders knit for the body, but there wasn't enough fabric and the damn print turned out to be off grain.  Oh well, I had plenty beefy black cotton/spandex laying around.  That would work for the body and the raglan sleeves would help disguise the skewing of the space invader print. Then red ribbing for the neck finish, cause everyone likes a nice pop of color.  Tadaaaaa.

Sewing the pocket is the trickiest part.  I used a straight stitch on the regular sewing machine with my edge stitch foot.  It took a couple of tries to get the stitches an even distance from the edge, but the sewing goddess smiled and made it happen.

The rest was all easy serging and a little coverstitch hemming. Oh toddler T-shirts, you are the best FO, I feel like making 20 of you.  The Oliver + S pattern and I are in a good place now, but someone stop me if I ever think about making woven toddler pants again.

Master Desmond said, "Robots Mommy, Robots!"  I told him they're aliens but he just shook his head cause everyone knows Mommy is crazy. "Robots it is, now let Mommy take your picture."  He then stole the camera and I had to grab some shots with the iPad. Here he is looking angelic right before he started licking my camera lens. Kids today and their propensities for licking technology!

This is the best shot modeled shot I could get cause the boy's got things to do, like take pictures of his lips while ignoring my shouts to smile for Mommy's iPad.  Good news is that the shirt fits him pretty well and he really likes it.  Bad news is when I have to take it off of him he gets pissed. "No my robot, MINE!!!"  Ahhh aren't they precious? Be nice to Mommy our she will steal your shirt and wear it as a hat. Yeahhh I'll make that look good. Phew, phew, phew, got you space invader.