Goth Budgie Tshirts

Earlier this year I drew up a budgified version of a medieval eagle for a woodwork project. A few days ago I felt like doing a bit of painting, but didn’t have enough brain for design. So I took my gothic eagle budgie and copied him onto a couple of remnant pieces of lovely fine mercerised cotton knit fabric.

The first one was just painted black like the original (nasty quality paint)

The second one ended up a more colourful and somewhat realistic version.

Then I was inspired to finally take a pattern from the utterly comfy baggy tshirt that I couldn’t get enough of last summer. Colourful budgie took up standard tshirt design position:

I’m not actually fond of wearing tshirts with bold designs front and centre. So I decided to put goth budgie on one side at hem level:

I was delighted that I managed to sew down the neck band seams neatly. When I’ve tried this in the past, I always ended up with a mess. This is done with a twin needle. The original seam was done on the overlocker.

Here is one on me. See, baggy and cool, especially in such fine knit.

and here is a little collection of new summer shirts. I cut and ran up a couple of others while I was at it. The fabric was all bought as remnants, sized somewhere between a bit too little for a tshirt and a bit too much. Hence the occasional contrast sleeve and neck band.

Orange merino jersey

I bought this length of orange merino jersey in Wellington over 2 years ago. I’ve had at least 5 different plans for it. When I got it out recently, I realised that there was less of it than my faulty memory had been telling me. Enough for some sort of long sleeved top and no more. I have need, or at least want, of orange clothing for this coming Saturday, so I settled on making a button necked pullover. I could have just made a skivvy, but that felt too boring. So I added a neck opening and buttons. Not my best design decision ever. Pullover + buttons + long hair = trouble. Oh well, I like the look and I have a long standing fondness for Henley type jersey shirts.

I put a lot of thought into the construction method. The fabric is medium weight and very stretchy. I have a poor history of getting machine top stitching to behave on such fabric, other than my standard twin needle hem. I was right to worry. I got the neck facing sewn down but not as neatly as I would have liked. I tried applying the first button loop by machine but it did so not go well. The rest got applied by hand.

The button loops are made from a simple three element braid of “tapestry” woolen yarn in appropriate colours. I plaited it, then steamed and cooled it to minimise unravelling.

Here is a close up of the neck. The grey shell buttons have previously done service on another shirt.

And on, both buttoned and un.

Not the most flattering shots. I was suffering from tshirt hem build up. I have another skivvy of the same cut, plus a short sleeved cotton T under that. It’s cold!