It's hot now, and I need some tank tops for tennis! The two Aura tanks I made out of Nike fabric are super comfortable, and I love wearing them. So I decided rather than hunt in a crap shoot online for the right fabric, I'd head on over to Salvation Army and find some XL shirts with fabric I could see and feel.
I found a lot of shirts that would work and got five. That's probably got way more than I needed, but, what can I say? I thought it would be such a simple thing to sew these into tank tops, and I guess I got carried away. Too bad it didn't turn out to be so easy.
I found a lot of shirts that would work and got five. That's probably got way more than I needed, but, what can I say? I thought it would be such a simple thing to sew these into tank tops, and I guess I got carried away. Too bad it didn't turn out to be so easy.
Before
After
Putting the shirts together went so quickly at first...cutting out the front and back and sewing up the shell; then, it went downhill fast. It was tedious and time consuming. It took me about 4 days to finish all of these once the front and back were sewn together! Here are the steps.
These days, I baste stuff together before going to the serger; it's too easy to fuck up on a serger with the tiniest wrong movement, and it's too much to serge and hold a seam together, especially where bindings, narrow seams, and armholes and necks are involved. So I like to have the seam secured first so there is only one thing to do on the serger—follow the basted line and sew.
Why did it seem so endless and tedious? Well, with 5 shirts, that's 5 neckbands and 10 armholes for a total of 15 bindings, which equals 100 percent Crazy Town.
Here's a close up of the bands.
- Hunt for enough fabric in the scraps for the neckline binding and the two armhole bindings and cut the strips. (I found enough for all tanks except for the teal. For that, I considered a number of fabrics in my stash, from a thicker black labeled "performance," to black and white cotton rib knit. In the end, I used some scraps of blue Nike fabric because it was soft, and I know how it wears. The color doesn't really match, but none of the other options looked much better, so I went with assured comfort.)
- Sew the strips together to get enough length for each binding. (I generally used the fabric from the XL arms, cut 1.5-inch-width strips, and sewed 2 strips together for each armhole binding and anywhere from 3 to 5 for the neckband.)
- Pin the bindings onto the neck and armhole openings
- Baste the bindings on
- Serge the bindings on
- Press all the bindings (twice; once as sewn and twice with the binding turned right side up)
- Coverstitch all the bindings
- Press all the coverstitching
These days, I baste stuff together before going to the serger; it's too easy to fuck up on a serger with the tiniest wrong movement, and it's too much to serge and hold a seam together, especially where bindings, narrow seams, and armholes and necks are involved. So I like to have the seam secured first so there is only one thing to do on the serger—follow the basted line and sew.
Why did it seem so endless and tedious? Well, with 5 shirts, that's 5 neckbands and 10 armholes for a total of 15 bindings, which equals 100 percent Crazy Town.
Here's a close up of the bands.
So, as I suspected when sewing, the neckbands are too big. So it goes. I also notice on seeing these photos, that these shirts are all way too long on me. I could shorten them by 2 or 3 inches, I think. Another day.
Jeez, it took days and hours and hours each day. I don't know how people finish things in a day. I could never finish a project in one day, even the "simplest."
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