The Mondo shirt in progress

Ok, I'm 4.5 hours into this t-shirt--(see my last post for details--I'm making a version of Mondo's Jackie O shirt)--I still need to hem it and bind the neckline somehow, though I seem to have lost the thin strip of fabric I was retaining for that purpose. I might do what Kristy recently did and iron on some interfacing at the neckline and then just fold it over, sew it and be done.

So I cut the fabric for the length of the shirt, and then cut that piece in half. Then I folded it in half and matched the stripes up on the cut edge. I used candle holders to keep the pattern piece down (it's a Burda cowl neck pattern from Oct 2005, but I'm not doing the cowl neck part). I didn't want pins to shift the fabric.

I put the corner of the armhole at the top of a black stripe--that was my "guidepost" if you will. Then I put the sleeve "corner" at the top of a black stripe too, that way everything would line up.

I had cut the sleeves as long sleeves, and at this point I was feeling very proud, and thought about not playing with the sleeves. But if I left them long like that, it would just be a striped shirt and not a Mondo shirt.




This is where I'm at now, though let me tell you, I took a lot of detours to get to this point.


I really really wanted the long sleeves, with a big 5.5 inch vertical cuff. I even made a sample:


But I messed up, folks. and then I was out of fabric. A real "make it work" moment that led me to the 3/4 sleeves with a 2.5 inch vertical cuff. I think it looks better this way. During Mondo's final critique, Michael Kors said when you do crazy prints (not that the stripe is all that crazy) you need some skin to break it up. I think he's right. The long sleeves would have been too much.

Here's sort of what it would have looked like; at this point I had messed up the cuff of the long sleeve and had to add another wedge to the cuff, so it was all misshapen and not as crisp and clean as I wanted it. But even if it was crisp and clean, there's a lot going on there. Getting circus-y....


Ooph, I can't look at stripes much longer today...I probably won't work on this shirt more til next weekend.

Good night!