handmade tee: black knit with flowered placket

Time to share another me-made! It’s another simple tee, actually shares the same guts as my favorite handmade blue bird shirt: 2-piece pattern, just a front and a back, no pesky sleeves. For this one I added a colorful flowered placket detail for contrast, and I thought I’d walk you through how I did it.

I started by cutting out the tee and constructing the placket separately. A typical placket has extra fabric sewn behind it to finish the raw edges of the slit, but I cheated. I constructed my placket with two pieces of fabric rather than one, and the seam down the center (and its generous seam allowance) allowed me to finish those edges without adding more fabric.

I sewed my two rectangles together until about halfway up, then used the rest of that unsewn area to make the slit, hemming it into the Vee shape you see above.

Flipped, pressed, ready to go!

I then placed the placket on the shirt front, lining up the bottom edge where I wanted it to end up. I flipped the placket to sew it right-to-right along the placket’s bottom seam: that way, when I flip the placket to the right side, everything is in the right place and one set of raw edges is taken care of.

After stitching that seam, I pressed the raw edges of the right and left sides of the placket under, then turned everything to the right side. This photo was taken right before topstitching the sides in place.

After top stitching, the placket was securely attached and I finished up by trimming away the black shirt fabric behind it. I did a few hand stitches to make the corners extra secure, and then continued with the shirt as normal. I finished the neckline of the shirt with a strip of black binding, and that finished the last raw edge of the placket.

The final special touch on this shirt is the sleeves: I bound the end of each sleeve with a strip of fabric to match the placket and tie it all together. That might be my favorite part!

My mom took these modeled shots on our family trip to Barcelona: here I am at Parc Guell, one of my favorite places in the whole world. The mosaic benches are just amazing… every time I look at my pictures I become ever more determined to tile my kitchen backsplash using broken plates. How awesome would that be?!