Hey June Aurora Tee

I have been on a major knits sewing kick since the beginning of the year. There is a gap in my handmade wardrobe when it comes to long sleeved knits. I have quite a few old RTW long sleeved t-shirts but most of them were bought before I had kids and either they seem too short now or they are just sort of on their last legs. So I’ve been having fun trying out some new patterns and making some long sleeved t-shirts.

I recently started going to a moms of pre-schoolers group at a church in town. It’s been great to meet some new people and also I love checking out what the other ladies are wearing. I noticed a couple of women wearing shirts that looked a lot like the Aurora tee pattern from Hey June. Of course I came straight home and ordered the pattern from Indiesew.

I decided that I wanted to use a print on the front and a solid color for the back and sleeves. I settled on this great grey and white floral Art Gallery fabric and some heather gray Laguna jersey that was in my stash. It wasn’t until the floral fabric came in the mail that I realized my gray Laguna jersey was just a bunch of scraps that I’d folded up and put back in my stash. I had enough to cut the sleeves and the facings but not the back. I ordered another yard of the gray fabric from Fabric.com (did you know you can order some Fabric.com stuff on Amazon and get free shipping? It’s great if you don’t want to spend the $35 it takes to get free shipping over on Fabric.com!) But when the fabric came it wasn’t the same color (and honestly I wasn’t sure it was even Laguna jersey. Whomp, whomp.)

So by this point it was 2 weeks later and back to the drawing board. Imagine Gnats had a sale on knits right about this time and I took a chance on ordering some of the Art Gallery solid knit in Tin Tint. I hoped that two gray Art Gallery fabrics would match each other, and thankfully they did.

Once I got the fabric the shirt was a quick cut and sew. I tend to get nervous and err on the size of too big when I use Hey June patterns because my measurements put me across a lot of sizes.  My bust is 36.5″ and my hips are 42.5″. I initally cut between a M and L in the top and graded out to the XXL in the hips plus about 1/4″ added just in case. It turned out to be too big so I sewed the side seams at 1/2″ instead of 1/4″. Next time I will sew a medium graded to between XL and XXL at the hips. This seems to be my standard size for Hey June patterns– I need to remember this so next time I cut the right size the first time!

The only change I made to the pattern was how I finished the neckline. I used the facing pieces from the pattern but I shortened them to be 1″ deep so that I could topstitch them in place and not have any risk of the facings popping out. I used my coverstitch for that and for the sleeves and bottom hem. I also didn’t use interfacing on my facings since I wasn’t paying much attention to the directions and totally missed that part.

I love my new shirt and I think it fits so well. It’s totally comfortable and I’m super into the shirttail hem shape. I love the contrast of print and solid together even if it took a bit of a wild goose chase to find two fabrics that matched. The fun part is that I ended up with fabric left over and I was able to make an outfit for Caroline so we can coordinate. Hooray!

Do you guys love to try to match sewing patterns to ready to wear clothes as much as I do?

~Teri

Disclaimer: As part of the Indiesew blogger team I was provided with the Aurora Tee pattern. All opinions are my own.

P.S. Caroline is wearing the Nessie top from Craftiness is Not Optional and the Alex and Anna Winter pj bottoms, both in size 12-18 months. The leggings are about 4″ too long and the waist is an inch too big. They will fit her for the next few years as long as she doesn’t wear holes in them scooting around!