HotPatterns Superfantastic Shirt and more Derby Sewing

Today I finished a "first version" of the HP Superfanstastic Shirt.  I would call it a muslin, but it only needs some minor changes for the final version, so I'll call it a "first version."  Had it not been wearable, THEN it would have been a muslin.  See how that works?

Two hints in making this shirt...make sure you trace carefully and transfer your markings for the front placket very carefully, and second, watch the construction video.  The placket construction is actually much, much easier than it appears on the pattern.  You can find a link to the video on the HP website.

Anyway, here is the finished shirt.  I used an inexpensive lightweight twill from fabric.com.  It is a poly-cotton blend, so it wasn't fabulous to sew with, but perfectly serviceable for a muslin:

The one change that I will make is to shorten the darts and angle them slightly lower.  On me, the darts are not as high as they are on the dress form, which was padded to match my heavier self.  Here is a closer photo of the center placket.  You can see that the placket forms a little pleat in the front that if you have a bit of a tummy, it will do a bit of camouflage.

The rest of the construction is fairly standard, there is not a ton of ease in the sleeves, so you can sew them in flat, which is very convenient.  The shirt also has some nice menswear-style details like a back yoke, center pleat, and sleeve placket.

I will make another version, but I think that a lighter weight fabric will be the way to go.  I have a whole pile of lawns in the stash to choose from.  I also used my new (to me) Singer 301 for all the construction.  It is a great little machine, that has a perfect stitch.  Since I was using the serger to finish the seams, the fact that it was straight-stitch only didn't matter at all.

It also came with it's own button hole attachment, you can see how little it is compared to the 1960's version I use on my 401, 503, and 603e:

I have also been doing more Roller Derby sewing.  This week it has been numbered arm bands.  If you don't have arm bands with your number on it, you have to write your number on your arm with a marker so the refs can see who you are.  

I made a pair of arm bands for myself, and when people saw them they decided that they wanted some, too.  So I made a bunch.  They are pretty simple, all you need is some black t-shirt knit and some white fabric to do your numbers on.  I start by tracing the numbers, then I use a transferrable marker to make an iron-on stencil.  I got some transferrable pens from amazon that work great for this:

Then I use a very short zig zag stitch to outline the numbers and sew them to the black band:

Then make a tube, leaving a small opening in the seam to turn them,  close the ends, and attach your velcro:

Now, no more drawing on ourselves with sharpie!

As ever, more updates later.  Hope everyone had a great weekend!