In search of half-assery.

Holla! Hope you are having a good week. I was a little (read: A LOT), overwhelmed at work this week and couldn't wait for basketball to be done so I could have some proper evenings back. For like a week because other things will get busy starting Tuesday.Oh well, that's adulthood or something, something.

Have you ever felt particularly smug about a blog post title? I feel pretty smug about this one. I was originally going to call it In search of perfection, just like the Heston Blumenthal show (complete with the theme song going in my head), but then I realized that that would be a complete load of crock. I mean, almost everything I did with this one was as far away as possible from doing things the right way, so there you go. In search of half-assery. Eat your heart out!

I want to talk t-shirts. Back even before I start sewing, I noticed something about my wardrobe (and I'm not very observant so this is a big deal**). I noticed that I had a lot of pretty, detailed tops, and a lot of pretty, detailed bottoms, which was great, but that when I wanted to wear a pretty detailed skirt, say, I really had nothing to wear it with because everything else I owned would be competing with all the detailing. This was a problem and so I started to buy (really shitty) plain tops to match with my detail-overloaded bottoms (and vice-versa). Now that I am sewing, all my plain tops are basically rags, and I want to replace them with quality me-mades.

**I once asked my mom when she painted the upstairs bathroom. She told me about a year ago. :|

To start, I was too cheap to start with an actual T-shirt pattern. So that's kind of a problem, but not too huge of a problem (on it's own). I used the Nettie since I already had one in my stash from my Madam-Mix-a-Nettie. Then, because my Nettie dress was rather tight, especially in the armpits, I decided I would go up in size. But then I had the brilliant idea to cut out the biggest size and just take it in. So, clearly, problems happened. The fit is okay, but it is still a bit too tight in the arm pits, which you can see in the picture above.

I used my leftover navy ponte knit from my original Nettie, and bound the sleeves and hem with some Liberty bias tape that I picked up at a local quilting shop. If I'm being honest, I don't think I should have added the binding. As we all know, I'm not really into florals, and tiny florals even less so.

I feel like by adding the bias tape, I just ended up making this one of those detailed tops I was trying to avoid. I find it hard to strike a balance between "interesting enough to wear on its own" and "can be used as a backdrop for fancier things". I don't think this one checks both of those boxes.

I also feel like the sleeves could be a tiny bit longer. I like three-quarter length, but these are more half-length sleeves. They kind of sit weird.

Having said all that, this shirt has gotten a fair bit of wear as a layering piece. I usually throw a cardigan over it and head into work like that, so I suppose that's okay. Overall, I think that this make could be summed up as:

"Meh." Since making this, I've finally decided that if I want to make some cake pieces, I need to stop half-assing things and just pick up the pattern I originally thought would make a great staple, so I've picked up the Bronte pattern, and after my dog lady sewing, I plan on making up quite a few of those. Actually, I'm pretty pumped and think that the Bronte can be interesting enough to wear on its own, AND simple enough to be used as a backdrop for other clothing items. Win-win. :)

[On a side note, if you have joined our Crazy Dog Lady Sewing Challenge, just a reminder that the deadline is March 15 and we have four amazing prize packs! (In case you missed our prize pack posts, click here and here to see what you could win).]

What was your biggest fail as a result of half-assing your sewing? I'd love to know that I'm not alone in this!

{A friend's dog and a great song!}