Troubleshooting - Grey Tunic Shirt

In a fit of boredom I rearranged my apartment last night. I started to clean and decided to flip the whole room - it's a studio so there isn't a lot of space to move anything to. It took me three hours and left me with a "new" view of my apartment, plus a pile of things to take to Goodwill and a shopping list for Ikea. On the upside, I think the place is set up now for me to get a table large enough to cut and sew on and some shelving to store all my fabric and yarn in a less chaotic way.

This may also help me to get some projects done since I won't have to be constantly moving from coffee table to ironing board to kitchen table to bed in order to work. Thus why all this takes me so long and it's easy to put off whatever I'm making for another weekend. Case in point, those Built-by-Wendy shirts. Although I did finish this grey tunic shirt before I went on vacation in early August – I just wasn’t able to get this posted until now. I’m now trying to sort out the second shirt (blue button down from Sew-U) which now I might actually be able to finish in the next couple of weeks.

Troubleshooting the Grey Tunic Shirt (finished August 2008)

In looking at the pattern and then going through my Vogue sewing book on how to make adjustments to the grey and white print top, I decided the best shot at making the shirt fit would be to put panels on the side seams and if needed I could add darts to give the front some shape. The shirt isn’t horribly tight, but it definitely pulls across my back and bust. It should hang loose and sit on top of my hips, so I am assuming if I add one inch panels to each side this should provide enough width for the shirt top to fit appropriately.

It took me a few tries to adjust the width of the side pieces and the sleeves, but it all worked out!

I added panels to each side seam that are just under one inch finished (3/8” seams). I took the elastic out of the seam on the sleeves and adjusted the neckline so that the elastic is only over my shoulders. This squared the front and back of the shirt and gathered the sleeves without pulling at the neckline. I finished it by bringing up the hemline above my hips so that it would hang a straight across.

This is not the most flattering shirt, but it’ll work for those days when I want something more than just a t-shirt but still want to be comfortable. Shirt Project#1 accomplished.