Long Sleeved T's Part III: The Butterfly Effect

Nothing to do with the beating of wings and creation of tsunamis around the world. The real "butterfly effect " is as simple as this: Put a butterfly on it and your five year old girl will love it!

This long sleeved T came about after the cutting mishap with my Bambiblauw kitten sweater. I'd accidentally cut the back panel without the extra seam allowances required for the button overlap. Thankfully there had been just enough leftover to re-cut the back panel and make that sweater up as it was meant to be.

And that left me with one t-shirt back panel. A little scoop out of the neckline and it was "magically transformed" into a t-shirt front panel, then a hunt through the fabric stash for something to provide the rest of the t-shirt yielded the very last bits of cream merino fleece (previously used here and here)

The Japanese sweater pattern has a band added to the bottom, and since this was the last bit of the Bambiblauw fabric I didn't have that luxury. I toyed with using another fabric but then decided it wouldn't be too short, and a lower hem at the back might compensate (weird logic when it's belly coverage you're after, but hey, I make this stuff up as I go along)

I had exactly enough of the cream merino so long as I did use the pattern's sleeve cuffs to get sufficient length. Instead of the japanese pattern's button up neck I just used some lilac ribbing for a neckband.

She was so excited that I'd plaited her hair that i got a lot of rear view photos :)

Then, quite uncharacteristically, I decided it "needed more". On a cold winter's night, with the Tour de France on TV, handstitching takes on a whole new appeal for me, so along came the butterfly:

I didn't have any pale purple embroidery thread, so I used a strand of pink and a strand of light blue together. I forget what the stitches are called, but whenever I want to do embroidery type stitching I pull this book off the shelf to remind myself what I'm doing. In the back of the book are some templates for various flowers, animals, etc. I traced the butterfly onto baking paper using a fabric pencil, put it face down on the fabric and rubbed hard to transfer the pencil markings to the t-shirt.

There was meant to be a whole lot more detail in the wings, but after I started doing one wing it all looked too much to me and I unpicked it and left it simple.

The "butterfly effect" worked a treat. She loves it and has declared this one her favourite of the long sleeved Ts. It's almost mine too, but my favourite is the last one that's yet to come...

Details:
Pattern: Modified pattern "r" from Girl's Sassy Clothes by Yuki Araki
Fabric: Bambiblauw panel remnant from Maaidesign. Merino fleece remnants from The Fabric Store
Size: 120cm