The garçon muscle tee

February is well on its way and  I had to start working on my sew alongs if I was serious about doing them all again this month. The Project Run and Play sew along tutorial/pattern was announced last week, the Mademoiselle muscle tee. Temperatures are around zero Celsius around here so the inspirational juices did not start flowing immediately.

With the opening of the link up I had renewed motivation and searched Pinterest for muscle tee inspiration. I was surprised with the results, muscle shirts are apparently usually covert in inspirational tough girl sentences (this is not an existing categorization, I know, but this was the best thing that came to mind). Muscle tees are often worn to gyms or during other sport activities and every form of inspiration is useful in those situations. I neither go to the gym nor jog nor any other related activity so the whole muscle tee scene is a bit foreign to me.

Looking through all those muscle tees I realized that a muscle tee should be "cool". I do not know anymore how I made the next step, but it somehow made me think of lions, those are cool right..? A lion has some very characteristic black lines in its face and I decided I would make a muscle tee for my son with a lion face. I looked around the house and found a perfectly yellow colored shirt in my husbands closet. My husband agreed he should have put this shirt on the upcycle pile a while ago and when I found a dark brown jersey in my stash I had all the materials I needed.

I wanted to frame the yellow of the face in brown jersey like manes usually frame the face. For a moment I thought about sewing some yarn between the seams, but quickly decided against it, this shirt was going to be cool, no costume. To create manes-look I decided to draw pattern pieces with asymmetrical width and length, a bigger back piece which would curve into the front.

My son is very skinny, both his body and arms have the size of those of a toddler. I therefore opted for drawing my own pattern based on a muscle tee he owned, instead of using the free pattern. I drew the arm wholes much smaller. I started my drafting with two the same back pieces. Then I cut the neckline lower on one of them  to create a front piece. Both from the shoulders and the sides I took 2.5 cm off and taped them to the back piece. I used 5 cm wide stripes of the brown fabric to finish the arm whole and neck.

Before I sewed up the tee I drew a lion's face on the front piece with textile marker. I sewed up the T in under 30 minutes with my lock. I also used a strip of jersey to finish the bottom hem (not visible in the pictures). My son wanted his trusted friend with him in the pictures, I didn't object. I was so focused on getting both the bear and a good shoot of the shirt, that only after the shoot I realized his fly was open...

I love to hear what you think of my creations. Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian).