Boatneck Lark Tees

Hi Everyone! How have you all been? I took an inadvertent blog break as we have had a lot going on over the last month. My baby turned 1, what?!? My husband had hernia surgery and the rest of us got sick at the same time, which was one of the toughest weeks that I’ve had in quite a while. Once we recovered from that it was time to have a party to celebrate my husband’s 40th birthday.

I am thankful that everyone is feeling better (except maybe Caroline, who seems to be working on a mouthful of teeth.)  It is less than a week until my husband can lift over 15 pounds, which means he’ll be able to lift Caroline again. Hooray! And I’ve finally gotten some time to sew! The only things that I have gotten photographed are two boatneck Lark tees. I feel like this blog has become all about t-shirts lately. I promise that the next thing I post about won’t be a t-shirt!

The main reason I bought the Lark pattern was because I wanted to make a long sleeved, striped, boatneck tee. After I got my fit perfected on this tee, I cut into my striped fabric (purchased here.) Unfortunately, I cut two front pieces instead of a front and a back. I had two yards of the stripes, so I had enough to re-cut the back. My Lark tee size is a 10 graded to a 14 at the hips, with a 3/4″ forward shoulder adjustment. My only quibble with this tee is that the sleeves feel a little snug at the biceps. Next time I do the long sleeves I will give myself a little more room in the upper arms.

Since I had an extra shirt front, I thought I would try my hand at freezer paper stenciling. I ordered paints last summer but never got up the nerve to actually try it.  I had even made the stencil (traced from a ready to wear top that I ordered online and turned out to be way too small) so I really had no excuse. I followed this tutorial from Dana Made It.

It turns out that freezer paper stenciling is crazy addictive. The paint hadn’t even dried and I was at Target buying plain t-shirts to stencil for my two sons. The hardest part of the process is cutting the stencil and that would probably be a lot easier if I wasn’t using a 15+ year old x-acto knife blade.

I ended up having enough of my stripes to make another boatneck Lark, this time with short sleeves. I did a hybrid of the cap and short sleeves on this one. The cap sleeve is a snugger fit than the short sleeves so I transferred the curved hem of the cap sleeve to the short sleeve piece. I also made it about an inch longer than the cap sleeve pattern piece.

On the long sleeved tee I did the neckline according to the instructions– serged around the neck, turned it under 1/4″ and topstitched. I noticed over the course of wearing it that the back of the neck flips out depending on how I stand. (Slumped, mostly.) For this tee I drafted a 1″ facing that I sewed on and topstitched with my coverstitch machine. I am not usually a person who goes out of my way to use facings but the neckline feels more stable this way.

I really love both of these new tees and I think it’s safe to say the Lark has become a TNT pattern for me. I need to get over my fear of the v-neck and try that next. I also need to take some drawing lessons so I can come up with more freezer paper stencils!

Have a great day!

~Teri