Making the Renfrew necklines easier

I love the Renfrew top.

It's a great draft with a good shoulder and neckline fit - both areas that too many other T shirt patterns don't do all that well.

I even teach the odd class on beginner's knits and use the Renfrew as our base pattern. It works.

And I have been adding length and width to make the pattern a tunic using the pivot and slide method and am pretty pleased with that too. Also the cowl is excellent. Well worth travelling over to other tops as I did with my blue Lazy-boy top a few posts ago.

All that said I find the V neckline and scoop neckline views have some issues that I detected in my student projects.

Here are my fixes for those issues.

The scoop itself is fine. 

Not too wide and not too low. And because of the nice secure fit in the upper bust there are none of the usual gaping issues. You can lean forward in all company and be comfortable doing it.

I do find though that the pattern piece for the neck binding is too long for many knits, like this very stretchy rayon/spandex below. I always use the old formula of measuring the neck opening once the shoulders are sewn and cutting the strip of neck binding 3/4 of that measurement plus two seam allowances. This seems to reliably pull the binding in just enough so it curves into the body and does not have any little peaky things. In this case, for the top here, that meant cutting off about 2"+ from the length of the binding strip as suggested. I think that the result, a neckline that curves in just enough, is a decent result.

Oh and BTW all three neckline views in this pattern tell you to top-stitch around the seam with a straight stitch after you have put the neck binding in.

Why?

Makes no sense to me. The seam allowances don't need that extra stitching to lie flat.

The seam allowances should naturally move down to the body if the binding is snug enough and top-stitching with a straight stitch around a part that is likely to stretch is just asking for trouble IMO. 

I get into enough sewing trouble on my own without asking for more, you can count on that. 

For instance the bright green strip drawing attention to my belly was not something I set out to do on purpose. I have decided to ignore this little detail since this top goes with my glasses but you and I both know it is still there.

Next I have abandoned the instructions for the set-in mitered V neckline the instructions tell you to use. I decided to do this for the simple reason that it breaks one of my main sewing rules, the rule I activate particularly when I sew something stretchy or emotional like a knit.

That rule is this: Never stitch a pivot if there is any way at all you can achieve the same result by simply crossing two shorter seams instead.

Crossing seams gives you the same end result, a corner or point of some kind, but by not pivoting you have avoided pushing the grain around in a woven (going one way going down to the pivot and going up the other away from it) which nearly always produces a little bubble at the point of the pivot - you are pushing the grain into a dead end and it has no way to go but up when you sew like this. 

In a knit pivoting so easily just twists the fabric around the needle and you get a little pleat that you will rip a hole through when you try to fix it, or a funny bumpy thing, to use the latin term.

So to do a V neckline that will always be easy and uses my two seam method and no pivoting I do a cross-over V. I will explain this tomorrow when I don't have dishes to do.

If my friend Carolyn is reading this I want her to know I can feel her eye roll at yet another psychedelic print. That poor girl has already done her time trying to get me to shop with taste. I obviously bought this when they let me out on my own.

Whenever I make something like this I always say to myself - I can wear it in Florida, I can wear it in Florida.

The thing is around here it is looking like this:

A shot near my youngest son's place, the ocean in winter. You might think this is picturesque - I just feel the cold.

My body is craving colour like an old sailor with scurvy.

So that's my excuse.

Now off to the dishes that still haven't figured out how to do themselves.

Another Lazy-boy shirt

You know this series is not about high fashion. In Style isn't presenting fleecey tops to wear when you do the laundry or sit at the serger on a cold morning as "on trend." This isn't the kind of outfit you wear and write "go me."

These are the kinds of tops you wear when you wake up and say "how many days to Florida" or "did you drink the rest of the coffee?"

And getting a top like this right requires some skill. 

Some additions to length and width for example. My worry with leggings are not that I am mutton dressed as lamb so much as looking like one of those college going away duffle bags where you have to have someone else help you hold it together so you can zip it up.

First the final product. Then the destructions so you can make one just like this for yourself.  Maybe this is a new uniform, something we can all wear when we clock off the shift of modern life. Me I'm styling mine with fake fur slippers.

Moving on and here we go:

Here is how we got here.

First off I used this Burda pattern for a T shirt and lengthened it to cover the parts that develop when you eat like an eighteen year old boy and you're not. 

Then I cut out the back and fronts as suggested on the fold, but only so far as around the neckline, across the shoulder and around the armhole.

I stopped cutting at the point the armhole joined the side seam, put in a pin where the lower armhole and side seam joined, removed all the pins everywhere else in the pattern, and pivoted the pattern out to make it as wide as I wanted (I think I added 1" to each side seam as measured at the bottom).

This is the brilliant Pivot and Slide method of pattern alteration that is my default particularly for adding simple length and width. I love this method for that because, unlike just measuring out extras and drawing your own lines, it maintains the original design lines of the garment. 

For instance one of my beefs with how they grade up patterns for plus sizes is that they increase everywhere - making the armhole bigger when there is width added to the sides for instance, which can give you baggy, bra showing armholes when all you really want is more to cover your middle.

The pivot and slide approach keeps the original armhole while giving you that extra across the body.

If you haven't tried this before, and if you are confused by my instructions (and who wouldn't be, I think I have confused even myself) you might want to look at this excellent little intro by the marvellous Nancy Zeiman:

Or you can see it all in more detail in Nancy's book:

Or for even more detail in this the original book on the method in which a very young and achingly beautiful Nancy is featured as a model:

The other detail on my own top is that I applied the cowl neck pattern from the Renfrew top to the Burda pattern, it fit perfectly without any adjustment. Of course I didn't check that out before I sat down at the serger, ever the optimist.

This cowl is amazing, very shaped so it hugs the neck and folds over nicely, no plain old rectangle. My only issue is that the construction directions are not as easy as they could be. Not as directed I sew two cylinders (seam the short end) and put them together, right sides together and just zipped around the top in a circle to join. And I do not top stitch the neckline seam down. This cowl stays put without that and when your cowl had gone in really nice why risk blowing everything on top-stitching?

At least that's how I look at it.

Can summer possibly be over and the Renfrew top

Well hello again.

I am back at school again with very large classes and what looks like some interesting students. I am going to be trying a few new things this term in a course I have taught fairly often. We will see how that goes. I always try to make my classes better every time I teach them. This is of course not always how it turns out. This intention means new ideas, some are good ones and some are dumb. Generally this works out overall but we will see how it goes this round.

This will be my last full time year teaching. After that my plan is to do one course a term and try to make it as near perfect as I can and just enjoy myself. No admin or all the rest of that stuff after this year - I have a feeling I am going to live without meetings just fine. More than fine.

My summer was so busy. 

I had family staying with me or visiting me for two and a half months straight and of course Billy the kid showed up too as the latest addition in July. All the folks allowed me to perfect develop my skills in cooking like I was running a restaurant, but while that was going on I caught up with everyone. This was good.

I really enjoyed having my nephew with me this summer a lot. It is kind of nice to have the good part of a teenager in the house (he is 17) without the responsibility of it being your own kid. Remember when you look back at your own children growing up and wish you had worried less and just enjoyed having them around more? That's what my summer was like.

He is a great conversationalist and I really miss him. When we said goodbye he cried and said I was his second mother which made me cry too. We will both remember the summer when he was 17.

Now we are back in normal life business I actually have a lot to tell you and am not sure where to begin.

Maybe I will start with some sewing and continue tomorrow.

One of the new things I will be doing this fall is teaching some classes at a new sewing studio/store called Patch Halifax

One of the classes I am doing is intro knits, a topic dear to my heart. Here is my sample of the Renfrew top in a high quality bamboo knit from the shop.

Of course this looks lousy as a hanger shot but is amazing on. I can't say enough wonderful things about this pattern. At first I figured that hey it's just another T shirt and I have sewn a million, but this is one well drafted, well fitting pattern. You will note that the hem issues that worry beginners have been eliminated by bands, not really gathered bands like we would have made old school, that finish the edges nicely. The cowl is cut so it hangs properly and interestingly and is so much nicer than the usual big rectangle from the Gang of Four.

I am going to be making one for myself soon in a stripe and that should produce a shot of myself in this pattern so you can judge for yourself.

Hope all is well with you.

So many people say fall is their favourite season but I have to tell you I am not one of them. So many people say that the return to a schedule makes them happy but I think I am built more for the random life.

You get more sewing done.