Agnes/Molly tops

As I mentioned when I posted my Seamwork Rory top a couple of months ago, my wardrobe has been in need of some new summer t-shirts. When this beautiful floral jersey popped up in my Instagram feed one day from Material Girl Laura (sadly it no longer seems to be in stock), I snapped some up to help boost my t-shirt collection.

The only question then was what pattern to make with it. While I really like my Rory top, I wanted this to be more of a "normal" t-shirt. I considered the patterns that I've already made and, while none of them seemed to be quite right, they weren't far enough from being right to justify buying another pattern so I decided to do a bit of low key pattern hacking to make something to my exact specifications.

The Tilly & The Buttons Agnes top is very close to what I wanted, the only problem was that I wanted the neckline to be a little bit higher. While I like the Agnes neckline in general, on me I think t-shirts with slightly higher necklines look better when I wear them with pinafores. Thankfully I have the Sew Over It Molly top (I think I got it free with a magazine), which has a neckline more like what I was looking for, so I simply redrew the neckline on my Agnes pattern pieces using my Molly pattern, and also used the neckband from the Molly top.

While this was a fairly simple pattern hack, I didn't want to cut straight into my pretty floral jersey without being sure that it would be what I wanted so I dug out this bird print jersey for a trial run. While it's Art Gallery jersey, so it's not exactly cheap fabric in itself, it's the leftovers of a piece that I won in a giveaway a couple of years ago (therefore it didn't cost me anything) and I'd already used part of it to make my first Gable top (therefore I'd already got a very successful and much worn garment out of it) so it felt like it was fairly low risk fabric to experiment with.

As you can probably already guess, my plan worked out nicely so I went ahead and made a second version of the top in the floral jersey and had a lovely Sunday afternoon sewing it up at a leisurely pace. While I enjoy tackling more complicated projects sometimes, often my favourite sewing sessions are ones spent working on simple projects where you can relax a bit without too much risk of having to reach for the seam ripper!

I'm really happy to be able to add these two into my t-shirt drawer. They're great basics so they'll definitely be worn a lot, the floral version is super pretty and the trial run version has put another piece of leftover fabric to good use. What more could you want?

Agnes with a cherry on top

We're jumping back in time slightly in this post to the first sewing project I finished this year, before either my starry Emery or my lovely circle skirt dress.

I initially wasn't going to write a post about this top because it's just a simple t-shirt and plenty of other bloggers have already reviewed this pattern, but I've been wearing it a fair bit so I decided it deserved some recognition.

This is my first version of the Tilly & the Buttons Agnes top. I say my first version, because I strongly suspect it won't be my last - let's face it, there's always a need for basic t-shirts.

For this one I chose to use the long sleeves (I was making it in January after all!), and leave the sleeves plain but add in the ruched neckline. The ruching is lost slightly in the print of the fabric, but it gives the neckline a slightly more V/sweetheart shape instead of the round one of the plain version, so it does add a little something even if it's not immediately visible.

The top was speedy and easy to sew, and as always Tilly's instructions are very thorough. I only skimmed through them, but I imagine they'd hold your hand nicely if you're new to sewing with knits. The only slight difficulty I had was when it came to the ruching - I snapped two pieces of clear elastic trying to get it to stretch as much as the pattern suggests, so ended up stretching it slightly less and it seems to have worked out fine.

I'm pleased with the fit. Agnes is more fitted than other t-shirt sewing patterns (in case you missed it, Amy at The Splendid Stitch wrote an interesting blog post comparing a few popular t-shirt patterns), and I prefer my t-shirts fitted but not overly skin-tight so I decided to go one size up. This gave me pretty much zero ease instead of negative ease, and it fits just right for my liking.

The fabric is a cute cherry print cotton & spandex jersey that I picked up in the sale from Ditto Fabrics. It's a really nice quality, was great to sew and is lovely to wear. They don't seem to have this colour in stock anymore, but they do have it in green if you need some cherries in your life!

So there we go! It's a simple project, but a successful one. Incidentally, I'm wearing it with another unblogged basic - a ponte roma Veronika skirt. Neither of them are necessarily particularly exciting on face value, but they've been getting a lot of wear and definitely fall into the secret pyjama category of being super comfy, yet totally presentable. While I'm never going to let go of my love for pretty dresses, this probably does show that I should give the basic patterns some more attention too. What are your favourite unsung hero basic patterns?