Ezra loves his last Oliver + S Raglan t-shirt so much that he wears it as often as he possibly can. So I decided it was time for another one for sure.
I made this one orange and white, and he calls it his “Emmet shirt” ( he just watched the new Lego movie for the first time).
I wrote before about how I had to take my coverstitch machine to get fixed. I got it back and although it definitely works better, it still skips whenever it goes over any thickness of fabric. It can only handle two layers of thin jersey. I am disappointed because I’ll have to take it back to get fixed.
For this t-shirt, I used a chain stitch around the neck to topstitch the seam allowance down. A regular coverstitch was out of the question. But by being very careful, I was able to hem the bottom and sleeves without too much trouble.
I finally got a little smarter while making this t-shirt and I figured out a good way to mark where I need the stitching to go for the hem. When you use a coverstitch machine, the outer needle needs to go just to the inside of the raw edge of the hem. If it goes too far to the left, both needles won’t catch the raw edge. If it goes too far to the inside, then you need to trim the excess off or it won’t look clean.
So, first I put the shirt wrong side up on the machine and made sure the outer needle was just to the inside of the raw edge of the shirt hem. Then, I put a small piece of masking tape there to mark where the folded side of the t-shirt needed to be to keep a nice, even hem.
Then I flipped the shirt over and aligned the folded edge with the tape and I had a cheap seam guide to help me make a clean stitching line and not accidentally miss where I needed the needles to go.
Of course I removed the masking tape promptly after so I didn’t get sticky build-up on my machine.
Sometimes when I try to pull my thread ends to the back of the shirt they get stuck and won’t go to the back easily. So I use a needle to thread them to the back of the shirt. It’s way easier than trying to use the tweezers from the wrong side of the fabric, which is what my manual recommends to do.
Take those threads straight to the back!
Anyway, another t-shirt is done for Ezra. We drank berry smoothies the first day he wore it and he spilled all down the front of it. I was pretty sad because it didn’t come out in the wash even with my heavy duty stain remover. So I followed the advice in this article and poured boiling water over the stain, and then soaked it in vinegar for awhile. It completely took the stain out. Woo hoo!
