We interrupt the parade of pants to show off the 32.5 week pregnant belly. 🙂 Rae has been hosting a spring top sewalong the past few weeks. Btw notice a lot of activity over there with Rae, huh? How does she keep up with it all? 🙂 She hosts this spring top challenge every year, and I really enjoy it as it gives me a chance to do some selfish sewing. I also love all the inspiration I get from other ladies as I peruse the flickr group. I have been wanting to try to make a few maternity tees and picked up some knit fabric at Hobby Lobby in order to make some practice tees. I actually really like the knits that I found- the jersey is super soft and fairly thick. However, I will see how they wash and wear before I make a final decision on their quality.

I completely winged this tee. I got a basic idea of the size that I needed from one of my maternity tees and then cut out two rectangles of the gray knit. I tried to copy my store-bought tee as far as the sleeve and neck placements. I used some 1/4″ elastic in the seam to add the side ruching.

I am pretty proud of the chevron pocket. I knew the gray fabric would be too boring by itself so I had the idea to add the blue knit for the pocket and bias bindings. The chevron design just kind of came into being as I was playing around with the pocket. I definitely think it adds a cool touch to the tee.

The only big mistake that I have to confess on this tee is that I sewed the sleeves in the wrong way which ended up with a huge flutter sleeve- not the look I was going for. Because I’m too lazy to seam rip and redo anything, I pinched up the excess fabric and created a seam down the top of the sleeve to make the it smaller. They could stand to be a bit smaller but I don’t think they are too bad.

This is my first experience sewing with knits for myself. I have had a little practice making a few raglan tees for Oliver but not much else. I know that my final result is not perfect but I am fairly happy with the finished result and didn’t experience all the horror of knit sewing that I was anticipating. I did leave the hem raw-edged because it rolls up so nicely and no  one will  notice that it doesn’t have a hem. That made the finishing of this shirt pretty easy. I am excited that an idea in my head actually came into fruition with good success! That’s what I love about sewing- the ability to take pieces of cloth, cut, and sew them together to create a finished piece…sometimes it kinda feels like magic. 🙂 Hopefully going to try out another tee this week and crossing my fingers to have luck again! It’s nice to have some new shirts to spruce up the tired maternity wardrobe. Also major props to the hubby for having mad photo skills and taking fairly decent shots of me… kinda hard to do when you are this preggers!

My photo shoot buddy giving his little brother a kiss…so sweet!