lee mcqueen you will always be famous

A few weeks ago, I got another mailer listing options for this fall's adult evening classes. Naturally, I chose to partake in the sewing class once more. I've decided to report on my weekly progress in the class on whatever projects I'm working on; this is the first of many progress reports.

Last semester, I painstakingly copied a pair of my Helmut Lang Rider Leggings before deciding to alter the pattern to make them more personalized (coming soon). This semester's first undertaking will be an attempt to recreate this tank top from Lee McQueen's SS 2003 collection for his namesake label, Alexander McQueen (pictured right).

This is one of my favorite t-shirts, ever. It's a deceptively simple design, a standard tank top with rolled shoulders. I would expect nothing less from Lee.

Step 1: Patterning

This is my first time working with a knit fabric. It's an interesting experience as cut edges fray less, the fabric has stretch built-in to the crossgrain, and did I mention STRETCH without needing to work on the bias? This opens a realm of opportunity to work with different percentages of the scale of the pattern to truly get that second-skin feeling and fit.

The shirt is a weeee bit tight and slightly cropped on me, so I took my measurements while wearing it. I measured the front and back hems, side seams, as well as the shoulder straps and plotted those lines onto the grid side of some wrapping paper. I then laid the shirt down and carefully smoothed over the necklines and arm holes to get as close as possible to their size. All I had to do next was square up my corners and use my French curves to neaten up my.. curves (left).

For today's class, I focused on solidifying my base pattern and getting it transferred onto some more robust paper. I repeated the same process as before, sans try-on, double-checked my outlines against the previous pattern I made, and plotted my points once more onto a paper shopping bag before cutting it out. I added notches at the sides in the event I wanted to alter their fit; voila, we have our pattern (right).

**R&D (Research and Design)**

At home, I realized I had a problem on my hands — I'd made a pattern for a full scale shirt, forgetting that my fabric has stretch in the width. I went ahead and made my toile with this pattern as muslin doesn't have much natural stretch. I learned several things during this process:

1. I need to make bias tape/trim

2. Bias tape/trim is so annoying to apply

3. The folded edge goes on the right side of the fabric (in my case)

4. Most importantly, I need to scale down my pattern

I didn't finish the neckline of the toile, since I figured it'd be more beneficial to start working with my real fabric to get an idea of how to manipulate it.

To scale the pattern down, I had to first determine the percent of stretch in my fabric and decide how mush I wanted to scale the pattern down to get the fit I want.

I determined the ribbed knit to have 80-100% stretch in it, so I'd be safe with a 45% reduction in scale, meaning I would have to use my pattern at 65%.

I was able to properly reduce my scale thanks to the help of many rulers, my cellphone, the preview app on my Mac, Pages, my printer, and many Googles. I would've figured it out eventually, but ratios have never been my strong suit, and I had to take statistics three times in college (do not ask me to use a graphing calculator).

At 65% scale, the new pattern is noticeably thinner than it's full-scale cousin. Laid against the McQueen tank top, it looks like a pretty solid pattern. I've laid them side by side for you to see (right).

Thank you SO MUCH for reading this week's entry! I know it's late.. and kinda rambly and scrambled, but I appreciate you so much!! How many times are you thanked for listening to something against your will? Probably not often enough. I'm thanking you for using that free will to read my writing!

The next entry will detail our second class, and the makings of our first sample!