I feel like I should pay the fabulous Jennifer Stern Hasemann of J. Stern Designs royalties already. Her Women’s Tee is just about the only knit top I make and it never fails to get compliments. I didn’t do much sewing this past summer, but toward the end I made an entire batch of short sleeve J. Stern tees – 5 of them!
On one I tried foldover elastic at the neck. I like the way it looks with that navy and black dot rayon from Emma One Sock, but it’s not my favorite neck finish. For the others I did what I usually do, which is cut duplicate pieces of the top back, front and side panels and use them as a facing. The result is a clean, bulk-free finish.
I got into the groove of production sewing with these. I used white thread on four of the tops with woolly poly in the lower looper. I went from serger to ironing board to sewing machine (for the neckline seam and understitching), then back to the serger and ironing board to finish construction. The only time I had to change thread on the sewing machine was to put on the foldover elastic. Then I rethreaded the serger for the light gray workout tee and saved the coverstitching of the hems for the end.
Converting from serging to coverstitching has gotten easier with practice (like everything else about sewing). I’m almost always using lightweight knits so I like to use Gail Yellen’s method of prepping the areas to be hemmed with fusible web so nothing shifts under the machine. It’s a tad fussy, but listening to a podcast while I work at the ironing board helps.
This gave me a nice casual wardrobe refresh. Thanks Jen!
The Couture Counsellor 