well begun is half done

The gaps in my current wardrobe, as opposed to the aspects that could be improved, are that my everyday pinafores are wearing out, and that there is a dearth of intermediate weather tops, for the days between the multilayered wintertime and the popover dresses of high summer. Something about starting SWAP on Boxing Day, so soon after the winter solstice, leads to our plucky heroine coming up with a plan based on clothes for winter, but by the end of SWAP in April, it will be quite warm indeed...

So, with that in mind, there will be short sleeves on the rest of my swappety-sixpackety tops. My Bang! said Max (homage to Rosemary Wells) T-shirt is finished, and the cave horse T-shirt will soon be as well. That one had as a "new" technique using fusible webbing tape to stabilise the hemline before stitching. My hope is that the tape, combined with the triple zigzag on my new machine, will work together for a hemline that lays relatively flat, a goal that remains still elusive for me in knitwear.

The neckline of the cave horse T-shirt is simply bound with a narrow band of jersey, with raw edges, handstitched in place. If the jersey is folded right side inward, then the natural curve of the fabric will help keep the raw edges down against the fabric, (the opposite of the Max shirt neckline detail)

Just as with machine sewing a binding onto knitwear, it helps to get a nice flat result if the binding is somewhat shorter than the opening. In this case, I gently pulled the binding taut whilst basting it into place, keeping the shirt fabric loose; around the more sharp curves, the binding will lay flatter if it has been pulled a little more taut (as seen in the first picture, the lower corner of the neckline curve looks almost gathered, but once stitched in place and trimmed it simply looks tidy)

Once the wider piece of binding is stitched down near the edge, the excess fabric is cut away, leaving a binding a little less than half an inch wide, and taking care to leave some fabric on the outside of the stitching.  Though this seems very narrow, the other shirts I have done this way are holding up well.

These two t-shirts complete mean that my SWAP sewing is almost half done, with five garments completed out of the eleven. My intention is to complete one knit top, one blouse, and three more pinafores, and then figure out what will be a suitable "bridge" to play nicely with both my grey/black and indigo/brown clothing...