Here is another pattern I purchased at Fancy Tiger Crafts in Denver, the Union St. Tee by Hey June. This is a downloadable pattern from Indie Sew.
While I know there are a ton of “tee shirt” patterns available, I have not had great luck with them. Some were overly complicated, others fit like a potato sack. I have been looking everywhere for a great basic tee … and (trumpets, please!!) I FINALLY FOUND IT.
The downside to downloadable patterns is the prep time and mess, but this was totally worth it. I traced off a small in most places, except the bust. Here I added about 1/2″ to each side of the underarm and similarly added the same amount to the sleeve.
I made 5 V-neck tee shirts from scrap fabric (under 1 yd each), in about 20 min each. Once I figured out a method to maximize the results, I may have been down to 10 min/shirt (sewing time). Cutting time is similarly quick with a rotary cutter (5 min). There are literally only about 4 major seams and three coverstitched hems. I do need to credit my Babylock Ovation for the quickness of this effort, as well. It auto tensions and effortless sews anything.
Steps
- sew the collar “v” together with a regular sewing maching
- sew the shoulders of the tee with the serger
- baste the point of the “v” collar in place with your sewing machine
- starting at one side of the “v”, serge around the neckline
- serge the sleeves in flat
- serge the side seams
- Convert to coverstitch and stitch the sleeve hems & shirt hem.
- DONE! (REALLY)
I made 5, but my sister took one before I could photograph it. I’ve gotten tons of wear out of these already. You can see a photo of the pink tee on me in this post.
The striped one and graffiti ones were a scraps from other projects (the graffiti was used for a BWOF project here). The stripes a lovely rayon viscose and the graffiti is a mesh, both from EOS. The other three were cute burnout knits that I found in the Red Tag section and picked up for about $2.5o (after discounts, sales, coupons, etc) for one yard, or were remnants. One in a batik burnout, on in a pink floral burnout, and the one not pictured was a camo burnout. I pick up knit scraps whenever they are super cheap b/c a little bit can go a long way. The EOS tops were probably about $10 in materials each, while the JoAnn’s tops were likely less than $3 in materials. 5 tops, about $30 total in materials.
Not bad.





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