Parisian Road: The Quest For Cute T-Shirts

I have officially and seriously been bitten by the sewing bug lately. I haven't sewn very much because I have many aspects of my sewing area that I want to improve, but you can't wait forever, ya know? I finally did a big time rearrange and clean up of my sewing room and made way for new projects.

One big motivator to get sewing was the Pattern Anthology Just Add Jeans Collection. I originally saw Julia Bobbin's version of the Parisian top and I was in love. I need like 15 of this shirt in my life. 

(photo from Julia Bobbin)

Seriously - this shirt is me to a T. It's a knit so it's comfy and movable, it has puffed 3/4 length sleeves (my favorite), and a peter pan collar. It's like the Megan-Love-Trifecta of patterns. I bit the bullet and bought the whole set of 4 patterns when they were on sale a few weeks ago, and quickly printed out and traced the Parisian top. 

According to my measurements, I needed a size XL. Never having sewn with knits before, I decided to make a muslin first to see how things went before I started buying up really nice knit fabric. I bought a jersey sheet set in the clearance from Target who knows how long ago with just this idea in mind - expendable fabric for testing out on. So, I cut out the pieces and started sewing. Much to my dismay, the sheets were not exactly the best fabric to try this top on. The pattern suggests the fabric have at least 25% stretch and the sheets definitely had that, but they have incredibly crappy recovery. I didn't realize how bad this would be until I tried on the body of the top. Brace yourselves for the lovely photo:

Yes, I was wearing my husband's basketball shorts. Sexy, right?

As you can see - it came out enormous. This picture was actually taken after I had already pinched out several inches of excess and sewed new seams. Yeah. So, I stopped sewing after that, hoping I could find some better fabric to try it out on. I also re-traced the pattern in a size Large in hopes of getting a better fit next time around. Happily, I didn't have to wait that long for new fabric!

When I went nuts buying patterns at a local thrift store last week, I also noticed they had a bunch of fabric - probably all donated by the same person. I grabbed a gray jersey that day, but thought about the rest all weekend and finally succumbed to the temptation of the other knits tonight on my way home from work. The gray in the photo is at least 2 yards of a ribbed knit, the mint green is a 2 yard cut and the pink is a 1.4 yard cut of jersey. The original gray I bought was the same type of fabric as the mint and the pink too. These were all from Fabric King and still had their original price tags on them with their length. The jerseys are at least 60" wide, so I know I'll be able to experiment quite a bit with them. 

So that's where I'm at as of writing this post. I plan to at least get another Parisian cut in one of these jersey fabrics tonight. I will get this pattern right if it takes a month. I just love it and I know all the effort will be well worth it :)