Alabama Chanin Cap Sleeve

I have been at it again! Sewing up another Alabama Chanin creation. This time I have ventured into a new item from the book Alabama Chanin Studio Sewing and Design.

 I decided to make the cap sleeve tee shirt from the book using the Angie's Fall design.

 Before I received my airbrush from my mother-in-law, I painted some grey jersey with my old spray painting method. I prefer the look of the airbrushed painting as it is smoother and looks better. However, since I had it already painted and knew I was going to do a reverse applique technique, I  choose to use what I had on hand.

I used grey jersey for the top layer, black paint, and a baby blue jersey as the backing layer. It is hand sewn using slate colored button/craft thread. I decided to leave the knots exposed on the top and felled the seams to the sides.

Close up of the reverse applique

 Please pardon my wind blown hair! We had to get the pictures while the kids tapped on the window for us to come back inside :).

Alabama Chanin Angie's Fall Cap Sleeve tee shirt.

Detail of the hand sewn seams felled to the back

Detail of the cap sleeve and neck binding with herringbone stitch

For this shirt, I cut the size medium and did not add the suggested seam allowance. I did however sew a 5/8th seam allowance into the shirt when I constructed it.. So the sizing is midway between the small and medium sizes. I found that to be the perfect sizing for me; not too tight, not too loose.

I love this shirt! It was fairly fast to put together and only took 2 weeks of evening and free time sewing. Using a running stitch rather than a reverse back stitch makes such a difference in terms of speed. I like it so much that I airbrushed three more shirts! One will be yellow with the Little Flowers stencil in black; another is tan with black in the Paisley stencil and the last is black with Anna's Garden in white. For those tops, I will make the neck binding wider. The detail of the herringbone stitch is lost on such a narrow binding.

If you haven't tried Alabama Chanin hand sewing yet, consider doing so. It is so rewarding to complete a garment from beginning to end in this way. Tracing the pattern, cutting, painting, embellishing, and sewing it all by hand is well worth the effort.

Happy Sewing