90 Minute Shirts

 I know that we teased you with this a while back, but we finally got our act together and put together a full post about it. 

I wanted to try the 90 minute shirt tutorial from Dana on Made.  I do not have any kids, so I made one for my niece and one for Meghan's son.  My sister donated some old shirts that she had laying around.  She picked the fish pattern for Mary's shirt.  For Henry I picked the gray and yellow combo, but it seemed a little bit too plain.  A few weeks before I made the shirts I had gone shopping with Meghan.  We saw some cute letter shirts at American Apparel, but they were pretty expensive for children's shirts.  Henry has been really into letters lately, so I thought that H would be the perfect thing to make the shirt a little bit more exciting.

When the shirts were done we all got together for a nice picnic in the park.  Thanks to Meghan for taking some amazing pictures of the day! 

(This ice chest was really weird.  Just sitting in the middle of the field full of ice.  We think there might have been a wedding there the night before.)

(We were close enough to O'Hare International Airport to see big planes flying by.)

Here are my tips for anyone who wants to try the 90 minute shirts.

1.  I do not have a serger.  Dana has instructions for making them without a serger.  As I was sewing on the collars, cuffs, and H's they were looking very uneven and bunchy.  I thought for sure that this tutorial just did not work very well without a serger.  Then I ironed the shirts.  All the bunches and unevenness came right out!  So my tip is to not get discouraged.  Try ironing the shirt and see how it looks.  Chances are it will look much better after a simple ironing.

2.  I found that Mary's shirt, which was about a 24 month size came out with better proportions than Henry's.  Henry's shirt was about a 3T.  The body of his shirt came out fine, but the neck was a little bit too large and loose.  I figured out that the key to a well fitting neck is the ratio of the size of the sleeve hole compared to how high the shoulder/neck pieces come (check the pattern on made and hopefully you will know what I mean).  I used the same 24 month onesie as a pattern for both shirts.  I made Mary's a little bit shorter and thinner, and Henry's a little bit longer and wider.  Mary's shirt had narrower sleeves and therefore sleeve holes.  This caused the shoulder parts to wrap farther around the sleeve on Mary's shirt.  This holds the neck in place.  Henry's shirt on the other hand had a larger arm hole, so the shoulder wrapped around less.  Therefore, his shirt does not hold as tightly at the neck.

Happy sewing!

- Laura