A little over 3 years ago, my husband and I moved to Dubai, of course my sewing machine came with me. Back home in Holland I used to go to sewing lessons once a week, with a small group off ladies sewing all different kind of garments. Moving here I missed those evenings and lost some of my “sewjo’, I started quilting and didn’t sew a lot of clothes. Until about 1 year ago I got to meet Maria. She has so many beautiful fabrics and enthusiasm for sewing, I started making clothes again and I am loving it.
So, when she asked me to make something with one of her jersey fabrics, I immediately knew what to make. I’ve been promising my husband to sew something for him for a while now, this was the perfect moment. I love working with jersey, the way it feels on your skin, the little bit of stretch makes it really nice to wear for t-shirts. The fabric I used is the light grey cotton jersey, its 94% cotton with a great stretch both crosswise and lengthwise. What I really like about this fabric is the way it recovers from stretching, how it keeps during the sewing and wearing.
Jersey as a fabric works great for tops and t-shirts. For my husband I wanted to make a ‘simple’ t-shirt that he would be wearing a lot. He loves wearing long sleeves and t-shirts with a print. I immediately thought of the Chess sweater by La Maison Victor. The Chess sweater is a sweater with raglan sleeves and a collar on the sleeves and bottom hem. I think using a raglan sleeve instead of a set-in sleeve it gives it a bit more of a sporty look and interesting feature when working with plain fabrics. La Maison Victor is a European magazine with patterns for children, men and women, but you can also buy their patterns online and print them. I really like their patterns as they have a good fit and good instructions.
I made some adjustments on the pattern because of the way my husband is build. I added 2 cm on the length of the shirt, because he likes his shirts a bit longer so he isn’t exposed when lifting his arms. He has different sizes on each body part, so I always have to draw between sizes. For this pattern he was a small on the waist and between medium and large on the shoulders. I decided to copy the medium pattern and ad a bit of extra seam allowance on the shoulders of the raglan to give some more working room there, I used 2 cm instead of 1 cm. This worked out great, it fits him nice around the shoulders. For the waist part I just used the medium pattern and took it in 1 cm on both sides when he was trying it on for size.
Before I start sewing, I always try out the stitch length and tension of my machine on a piece of scrap fabric, for this t-shirt I used the standard setting for tension. I used a 70/10 jersey stretch needle. I used a straight 2.5mm stitch to sew everything together so I could fit on my husband and finished it with the lockstitch on my machine to reinforce the seams and allow stretching.
I have made both raglan t-shirts and shirts for my husband before, but this was the first time with trying to adjust the seam allowance in a raglan seam. It worked out really well and I think I will definitely do it again and play with it a bit more. If I was going to make this pattern again, I would probably lower the neckline a little bit, because I think that looks nice. My husband loves his t-shirt and wears it a lot. Thank you, Maria, for letting me try this fabric, I know I’m going to make a lot more with these jersey fabrics!
ThreadWerk: Thank you so much Sanne for sharing this awesome t-shirt and the details for pattern adjustments with us. There is still a good amount of fabric left to recreate Sanne's or a similar t-shirt. This fabric also comes in Wine, Pale Teal, Wine and Vintage Rose but you also use one of the many available prints. Black is currently sold out but will be back in stock soon along with a few more plain t-shirt fabrics. You heard here first 😉