Frankie T-Shirt

I very rarely make things that are green. In fact, I don't think that I've ever made something green before, and it's not a colour that I have in my ready to wear wardrobe either. But for some reason I found myself buying some green jersey when I went to Stoff and Stil last summer. Stoff and Stil have the most incredible selection of jersey fabrics I have ever seen (if you're interested in seeing what else I bought from them you can have a read of that here) and this fabric is the same. It's a medium/heavy weight knit, possibly even a ponte di roma, which means that it has a lovely structure but isn't so rigid that it doesn't hang nicely. It's also a wonderful quality fabric.

I've never been put off sewing plain t-shirts as such in the past, but they're not exactly the sort of project that I'm drawn to. However, when I re-discovered this fabric (which had been somewhat neglected at the back of the cupboard during winter) I quickly found myself levitating towards sewing a Frankie t-shirt. This is the first time I've sewn the Frankie but not the first time that I've used Tilly and the Buttons book Stretch! so I knew to expect perfect instructions and a good fit. I did want to make a couple of adjustments to the pattern though. In the end the main thing that I changed was to take quite a lot off of the hem. The actual t-shirt length is quite long and I knew that I wanted to make it cropped. Also, this fabric isn't the light weight drapey jersey that the pattern calls for, so I thought that it would hang better if it was shorter and I didn't fancy being swamped in a mass of dark green fabric. 

As I've been sewing quite a few t-shirts recently I've found that I've been sewing more and more neckbands. Surprisingly, I'm actually really starting to enjoy sewing them! I now know the right techniques so that the neckband is evenly placed along the neckline and I love how satisfying it is to sew a neckband and topstitch around it. Also, sewing it on an overlocker makes it so quick! That being said, I did recently have to unpick a neckband that I sewed on the overlocker because I placed it the wrong way round...
By now I've made quite a few a few differnt t-shirts and I'm really pleased that this one will be a good pattern to add to the list. The Frankie t-shirt isn't dissimilar to the Linden, but I find that the neckline is much smaller which I prefer. Also, the Linden is more of a jumper wheras this is definitely a t-shirt. Hopefully it will be a really useful top to just throw on but with the benefit of it being handmade to make it more special.