Back in June, when I went to Portland, I bought this beautiful knit fabric from Bolt Fabric Boutique. I got a yard – just enough to make a t-shirt out of because it was pretty pricey – somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 a yard! According to the Sinclair Cachet knit tee pattern, that’s all I needed.

So, fast forward a couple of weeks, and I washed and dried the fabric and got brave enough to make my t-shirt. I was super nervous about cutting this beautiful stuff. What if I messed up? But I’d made a shirt out of this pattern already, and I liked the fit, so I was pretty confident it would work out. I laid out the back piece of the pattern on the fabric and cut it out. Then laid out the front piece and…HOLY CRAP IT DOESN’T FIT.

So I sadly piled it on my dresser and tried to figure out what to do. It sat there for months. Since the pattern had a color-blocking option, I thought about finding a coordinating solid and using that for part of it, but that made me sad. I even went as far as buying a pale pink remnant but I could never bring myself to use it. I just didn’t want to have to break up this lovely fabric.

Finally, one day, I decided I was just going to make the shirt. I was going to piece it together and use all the fabric and it would be fine. Okay, there would be some seams across it, but it would be okay. Better than wasting the fabric altogether!

So I laid the remaining pattern pieces out, and yeah, I had to make a few cuts, but I squeezed them all onto the fabric and it was fine. It was gonna be fine.

Took them up to my sewing machine to put them together and…wait, why was the top front piece not lining up with the rest of the pieces? This is very strange. I cut it on the fold as directed. I mean, sure, I’d had to put the pattern piece upside down to make it fit but…oh no…I cut it on THE WRONG FOLD.

Cue banging of head onto desk. This pattern has short dolman sleeves, so the neckline curve looks suspiciously like the curve under the arm.

Soooooo another place I had to piece it together. Right down the middle. And then right under my bust. And then a band at the bottom. Lovely.

I call it…Frankenshirt!

Fortunately:

• the floral pattern hides it reasonably well.
• I don’t care.
• my beloved York pinafores hide the seams and coordinate perfectly with the print.

Behold:

(Photo credit: Ellie)

I’m also going to sneak in a picture of the Blank Slate Blanc tee I made out of Harry Potter knit fabric because it’s so beyond dorky I can barely stand myself. Well, the picture even more than the shirt. I went and dug out the wand Oliver got at Universal a couple of summers ago as a prop, for goodness’ sake.

This shirt also sat on my “unfinished” pile for ages and ages for no good reason, and I still haven’t hemmed the sleeves and I probably never will. I wonder if there’s a spell for that?