Sewing: Colorblock V-Neck Tee

7 Comments

I have this favorite tee – I bought it at Walmart, and I tailored it to fit. It fits me perfectly: not too tight, not too loose. The material wasn’t the best in the world, so I decided to cut it up and use the fit to draft a pattern for myself. I haven’t made a real teeshirt with inset sleeves using knit fabric before, and it’s so much easier than with wovens. I’ll be making a lot more knit tees from here on out.

melissaesplin-sewing-colorblock-v-neck-tee-2

Here you can see how it looked at the mini parties at Alt. Not too shabby for my first v-neck?

melissaesplin-sewing-colorblock-v-neck-tee-3

You can see that I properly mitered the inside of the v, that was the hardest part of constructing this tee. I didn’t want it to pull or pucker, and honestly, I can’t really remember how I set in the ribbing, I just remember going so slowly and sewing it first with a straight stitch on my sewing machine, then going through with the serger afterwards. Here’s a youtube video that uses a much easier method for the v, and overlaps the neck band pieces as opposed to mitering them.

melissaesplin-sewing-colorblock-v-neck-tee-4

I used a very similar technique for creating the color blocked panels on the front as I used in my gold-backed wiggle skirt tutorial. It was pretty easy to do that, but thinking back, it would’ve been pretty cool to add the same color blocked detail to the back. I used the same fabric from my stash as in this dress refashion.

It was really important to press every seam and to top stitch as much as possible. I don’t have a coverlock machine, so I used double needles and wooly nylon thread for finishing the hems. This project took about an hour to complete.

melissaesplin-sewing-colorblock-v-neck-tee-1

I’ll definitely have this in tight rotation with my other tees. I now want to make one with a slightly deeper V (how hipster am i?) and long sleeves.

It was fun to brag about making both my top and skirt at Alt Summit (proud much?). Pretty sure most people were surprised when I told them my entire outfit was handmade (minus the shoes – I should work on that).

view or add a comment
  • Categories
    1. kelsey bang says:

      LOVED this shirt you on! You are so dang talented!

    2. Jessica says:

      What a fun blog! Wish I could’ve gone to alt summit.

    3. Brenda Rhodes says:

      You look beautiful and the shirt is so cute! You look like you were having so much fun. Well heck, they should have been impressed that you made your entire outfit! I kniw i am and i sew! The detail on your shirt is amazing. Doesnt look homemade at all!!

    4. LOVE the shirt!! It’s so cute!! I think the sleeves are the perfect length! I have to admit, using words like “mitered” makes me think I would never be able to pull off sewing something like that, but I’m very impressed by you!
      Love the new look of the blog, too!!

    5. Emily says:

      I’ve been wanting to make a v neck shirt like this. Thanks for the link. Fun pictures too. :)

    6. […] to get your creative juices flowing: color block wiggle skirt • color block leather pillow • color block v-neck tee • color block bib necklace • color block maternity/nursing top • color block shirt […]

    mobile site