Alright, strap yourself in, this post is a big one!!

I’m covering the Stellan tee by French Navy Now, the Inari tee by Named Clothing and the Nikko top by True Bias in detail. And, if you want to skip to the end, there’s also just a big ol’ list of tee shirt sewing patterns, in case you’re trying to find your own basic t-shirt sewing pattern perfection!

Plus, I’m taking a bit of a merino jersey deep dive too!

Let’s get started!

Hands up if you hoard merino jersey because it seems too precious to actually sew?

Please tell me I’m not alone.

For Christmas, I was luck enough that my lovely sister got me some of the lovely new ZQ Premium Merino from The Fabric Store. I’d been really curious as to how it compared to its previous merino jersey – which I had already thought was pretty lovely as it was! The ZQ Merino claims to be ethically sourced and can be traced back to individual source farms – if you’re interested, there is information available on The Fabric Store’s site all about it.

The ZQ Premium Merino didn’t disappoint when it arrived. It is somehow smoother and more cooling to touch than The Fabric Store’s previous premium merino, while still being just as warm.

All-in-all, its arrival got me feeling excited about sewing up some basics, so I got out all of my merino jersey (the navy ZQ merino, some scraps of older merino from The Fabric Store and some merino and tencel blend (it’s the rust and pink colours features in this post) from Meter Meter), together with a few other jerseys I’d been saving and off I went on a basics sewing binge!

In search of the perfect tee shirt…

Cuz, despite appearances, tee shirts aren’t actually all that easy, right?

For such a basic item, I’ve never really had one that is, well, actually perfect.

Too tight. Too loose. Too boxy. Too transparent. Too long. Too short. Too itchy.

Raglan or regular? Good for tucking in or out? Split hem – yay or nay?

Let’s face it, for something that is supposed to be simple, there’s a myriad of things that can go wrong. And a lot of choices to be made!

I guess, speaking in the abstract, my perfect tee-shirt needs to be roomy in the sleeves, cuffed, with a little positive ease but not boxy, with regular, rather than raglan sleeves.

But, well, a lot depends on context. The perfect tee to wear with wide-legged culottes is not the perfect tee to wear with skinny jeans.

Plus, is it to be worn alone or as a layering item?

And I haven’t even started on possible necklines. Crew neck. Scoop neck. Boat neck. V-neck. Umm, perhaps one of each?

Hell, I can’t even decide if I prefer to say tee shirt or t-shirt!

So, in order to do this right, I decided to do one of those things that I’d always wanted to do, but never felt I had enough time.

Test.

Experiment.

I decided to sew up a few different tee shirt patterns and really decide which one works best for my body before jumping into my batch sew!

I decided to sew up the Stellan tee by French Navy Now, the Inari tee by Named with a full bicep adjustment and extended sleeve length and the LB Pullover with shortened sleeves. I chose these simply because I already owned them and had the pattern pieces cut and printed, rather than after a detailed selection process.

Based on the outcome of my “test t-shirts”, I would pick the best tee-shirt sewing pattern (or mix and match as needed) and make up a batch of merino and striped basics!

Sounds like a plan, right?

So, here’s the result of my foray into some “investigative sewing”!

Stellan Tee by French Navy Now

The Stellan Tee by French Navy Now is a FREE PATTERN, which can be downloaded from Sarah’s website.

Yeah!!

I made it up in a size XXL, based on my waist measurement. That makes the tee-shirt you see here the largest size available.

This fabric is the merino/tencel blend from Meter Meter. I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the Stellan tee. I liked that it was roomy, without making me feel that I was swimming in it. It wasn’t too boxy.

The lighter weight fabric was very drapey and comfortable to wear.

I liked that the arms didn’t need any modification and I found them spot on in terms of both being wide enough and long enough. I also really like the very slightly curved hem.

I think it has a quite lovely neckline and I like the way the neckband is a little bit wider. In fact, I actually sewed this up first and it almost made me abandon the experiment plan and just stick to this pattern.

But, don’t worry, I stuck it out and was better off for it!!

Hacked Inari Tee by Named Pattern

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So next I tried out the Inari tee. The Inari tee pattern I used is a size 42 at bust, graded to a 44 at the waist.

The Inari pattern itself is for a very cropped t-shirt or a cocoon shaped tee-shirt dress. I have hacked it here into a lengthened version of the cropped t-shirt. Just to be clear, I have lengthened it using straight lines from the cropped tee, not by following the lines for the more cocoon shaped dress. The navy and striped versions in this post are 33cm longer than the cropped tee shirt which comes with the pattern (yep, I told you the cropped tee was really cropped). The grey one is even longer!

The main modification I made to this Inari Tee is a full bicep adjustment. My upper arms are a constant source of fitting angst for me. I really wanted a tee-shirt with nice, loose arms and I love the way it looks with the cuff.

I added in about 4 centimetres of extra width to each sleeve using the slash- and-spread method. You also need to remember to add that extra width into the cuff piece.

I also lengthened the sleeve by a couple of inches.

You can see that my modification of the sleeves means that the sleeve and cuff no longer meet as smoothly as they could and there is still a little bit of tweaking of this detail needed to get this “perfect”.

Just for reference, I also made a white version of the Inari tee last year, in a more cropped form (although still longer than the pattern is designed). In this version, I widened the sleeve by 4cm with a full bicep adjustment but didn’t add extra length to it. In case, you are curious, here’s what that looks like:

This white one is made from bamboo jersey.

Just after doing my full bicep adjustment, I saw this excellent post from Skinng Bitch Curvy Chick about how we’ve all been doing Full Bicep Adjustments wrong. Including me!!

I highly recommend the post and it may be that I do need to up my game a bit in this regard, since this is often a problem area for me.

But, what can I say, I’m still pretty scared of armscyes.

So for now, in a knit, I’m calling this enough of bicep adjustment!

LB Pullover by Paper Theory as a Tee Shirt

Despite having made many an LB Pullover, I’d yet to try the regular neckband, as opposed to the mock neck variety. I decided to give it a try in order to use the LB Pullover as a point of contrast to see how a fully dropped shoulder garment works as a basic tee on my body.

I’m actually not going to show you how this turned out because the end result looks horrible through no fault of the pattern. Although I started out wanting to try the normal neckband, I realised that I had some Merchant and Mills ribbing that coordinated with my fabric so I took a last-minute-not-well-executed decision to make up the LB pullover tee-shirt with the ribbing as the neck, rather than use the neckband.

I cut my ribbing too short, however, and the neck looked hideous as a result. It created gathers and waves and bunches at the neckline which radiated all over the shirt.

Since the reason it looked horrible is entirely my own fault and in no way a reflection of the pattern, I didn’t think it was fair to put the image out there in case it misled anyone!

It’s all in the shoulders

Once I had sewn up all three t-shirt sewing patterns, I had to decide which one I found best for me.

After all, let’s face it. Most t-shirts are a combination of simple rectangles. How to go about deciding between them?

For me the key factor became fit at the shoulder.

On my body.

The dropped shoulder of the LB pullover created some pooling of fabric at the underarm (as is unavoidable with any dropped shoulder) and I didn’t like the way it looked as a tee-shirt. It somehow seemed more obvious than in the numerous long-sleeved LB pullovers I have made.

So it was very clear to me that I didn’t want a full dropped shoulder for my tee-shirt pattern, which left the Stellan tee and the Inari tee to evaluate.

If you look at where the arm seam falls on my body the Stellan shoulder is still slightly dropped, which is contributing to the pooling of fabric around the shoulder. From the above pics, you can see that pooling is equally evident at the back.

The Inari tee, on the other hand, is hitting at the right place for my shoulder/arm and the entire fit across the upper part of the tee shirt is better as a result!

So, this was the key basis on which I made the decision to use my modified Inari tee pattern as my basic tee pattern.

To state the obvious, however, what works for me, won’t necessarily work for others. I vaguely remember some rumblings online about how some sewists specifically had issues with the arms and shoulder seam of the Inari (although this may have been connected to the fact that it can be sewn in both wovens and knits). So there’s no universal formula. But, for me, in combination with my significantly widened sleeve, I’m really happy with Inari as a tee-shirt.

Although, having said this, my Inari tee no longer looks a lot like the pattern does “out of the envelope” with all of these hacks!

Having settled on the Inari tee as my “winner” (OK, I know the contest had a pretty limited scope but time and fabric means I can’t try out all the t-shirt sewing patterns!!!), I then used it to whip up a lovely tee shirt out of this retro stripe cotton jersey from Blackbird fabrics.

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Shhhh, don’t tell the other tee shirts but this one might just be my favourite!

Plus, to me, this tee-shirt reflects one of the key added values of having developed a clear colour palette. My merino/tencel blend colours coordinated perfectly with the stripes!!

And there’s also this one, just for fun.

Cuz what could be better than wearing your sewing machine close to your heart?

I had no idea what I was doing here, just used interfacing on some black merino scraps to whack shapes together until they resembled a sewing machine!

True Bias Nikko Top

In addition to tee shirts, I wanted to use some of my merino jersey to make the Nikko top by True Bias. (True Bias have very recently released the Nikko top (and dress) in an extended size range of 14-30 (yeah!!!!) drafted for a different cup size. I have used the original 0-18 size range here as I’ve had this pattern for a while).

I’ve found myself wearing a lot of unbuttoned shirts with turtlenecks recently, but, sometimes, layering a base layer turtleneck with a flannel shirt is actually too warm.

Enter the need for the sleeveless mock neck layer! Haha, I finally understood how a sleeveless mock neck could fit in my wardrobe!

I have used the size 16 of the Nikko top.

I have to say that I feel that the Nikko top does not fit my body particularly well, especially around the arms. My body measurements fell perfectly in the size 16 measurements, but the Nikko top came out completely gaping all around the arms.

In the navy version (merino ZQ), I have taken an inch out at the side seam starting at the underarm and tapering back to the normal side seam as soon as possible (thereby removing a triangular wedge-shape) in order to tighten it up at the armhole.

On the rust version (merino/tencel blend), I had to take almost 2 inches out of each armhole, following the same process.

Even with this adjustment, it is still not a great fit around the armhole. I feel that the arm band needs to be smaller to do a bit more work pulling it all in. At least in both of these fabrics.

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Further, I find that most of my bras (especially the wireless kind I have started wearing since working remotely, if I wear one at all!), can peak out of the armhole at both the front and back very easily.

Also, for such a simple pattern, I thought there was more it could have done. For example, notches on the neckband to mark where the shoulder seams should line up. The Inari tee shirt neckband, for example, includes these notches.

The Nikko top doesn’t and tells you to use the “divide by 4 and stretch evenly” technique.

But the front neckline of a tee is almost always going to be a bit longer then than the back neckline, so dividing by four isn’t actually going to create an entirely even distribution!

And more to the point I would hope that designers think about what is easiest for the sewist?

I for one, would rather simply snip a notch while cutting out than have to divide my neckband into four parts and mark each of them.

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So, please, please, please, can all tee-shirt neckbands come with notches for the shoulder seams. I feel that it’s not an unreasonable request!

So, since I made the Nikko top purely as a layering item, I’m ok with these. They will serve that purpose. But, I can’t say I was enamoured by this pattern or how it works for me.

Fabric stories

So I think I’ve already mentioned the fabrics at play in this blog post, but I’ll just recap since this has turned into such a stream-of-consciousness tee-shirt explosion.

The navy is the wonderful merino ZQ from The Fabric Store. The pink and rust are merino/tencel blends from Meter Meter. I bought these in person at Meter Meter last summer and they seemed to be remnants from the previous year, so I can’t be sure if they are exactly the same fabric as the current merino/tencel they have in stock (so I’m not going to link it). The retro stripe (Blackbird fabric) and the grey are simple cotton jerseys. The grey is nothing special and a bit on the cheap side – I vaguely recall buying it as a “filler” to get me to the free shipping limit somewhere a few years ago and then promptly regretting having done so!

The merino ZQ was by far the most lovely fabric to sew with and I love the way it feels against the body. Smooth and cooling, yet keeps me warm. Not itchy at all.

I had really hoped to love the merino/tencel blend because I can buy it from within Europe. Much easier! And while it is definitely a nice fabric, the merino ZQ from the Fabric Store is much nicer. The merino/tencel blend was a lot lighter and finer and this made it, at times, a bit difficult to work worth. It often got sucked down under the base plate.

It also made it hard to find the best way to topstitch it. You can see that I have messed up my pocket somewhat on the pink Stellan t-shirt because the triple straight stitch I used was just too much for this fine fabric and has created ripples. There is also waving at the hem in a way which there isn’t for my merino ZQ. And that’s not just because of the curved hem – the hem in my merino ZQ Nikko top turned out much better than the one in my merino/tencel Nikko top.

Sorry, these pics are all tucked in, so I can’t show you- you’ll have to take my word for it!

So for weight, touch, warmth and ease of sewing (everything really!), the merino ZQ was by far the better product.

By the way, being such a big merino fan, I wasn’t that excited about sewing up the cotton tee shirts featured here. It was more one those “this is a good opportunity to get these sewn up” moments than one of unbridled enthusiasm.

But the experience reminded me that a nice thick-ish cotton jersey is such an easy experience to sew and actually feels really nice to wear. Something about these cotton tee shirts remind me of my childhood. I really shouldn’t overlook cotton jersey – sometimes the simple things can be the best!

Sewing Patterns for the Perfect Basic Tee Shirt

I thought it might be useful to finish this post with a list of patterns which might just be your perfect basic tee shirt sewing pattern.

Cuz, let’s face it, that unicorn looks different for each of us. Feel free to chime in by adding your own favourites in the comments so we can make this a useful resource!!

Could these be your perfect tees?

Fog tee by The Fabric Store

Tyra tee by Just Patterns

Tarlee Tee shirt by Muna and Broad

Concord T-shirt by Cashmerette

Rowan Tee by Megan Nielsen

Ebony Tee by Closet Case

Plaintain Tee by Deer and Doe (FREE PATTERN)

Stellan Tee by French Navy (FREE PATTERN)

Birgitte Basic tee by Maria Denmark

Astair Tee by French Navy

Basic InstincT by Sasha Secondo Piano (FREE PATTERN)

Union St Tee by Hey June Handmande

Renfrew by Sewaholic

Elliot Tee by Helen’s Closet

Equinox Tee by Pattern Fantastique

A number of popular recent sewing books also have possible “basic tee” patterns, like the Frankie Tee in Stretch by Tilly and the Buttons and the Ruska tee in Named’s Breaking the Pattern. There is also one in the Deer and Doe Dressed book and ebook (*I received a free copy of this last book as a gift without any obligations*).

Hope that list is enough to send you down a rabbit hole!

I’d love to hear about your requirements for the perfect basic tee shirt!

And whether it’s tee shirt or t-shirt!!

And, finally, a word of encouragement for those who, like me, have trouble finding motivation for sewing basics. I often fall into the camp of “my time is precious so I only want to spend it sewing projects that bring me pleasure”. But I have to admit that it feels really nice to have a bunch of tee shirts in all of my fav colours which fit me well. For basics like this, I have often tended to go with RTW, but these tee-shirts fit me significantly better than RTW (especially around the arms) and are made of fabric which is infinitely nicer than anything I would have purchased RTW.

Also, here’s the real kicker – these Inari tee shirts, for example, are a mere 16 straight lines of sewing!!!!

Really!

I promise!!

2 shoulder seams. 1 neck band attached in a circle. 1 neckband attached to neck. 1 top stitching neck. 2 sleeves. 2 side seams. 2 cuffs attached in the round. 2 cuffs attached to sleeves. 2 cuffs topstitched. 1 hem.

It feels a bit magic to me when I think of it as a mere 16 straight lines of sewing. Perhaps I should start conceptualising all my sewing projects like this.

Although I shudder to think of how many straight lines were implicated in my Page Dress by Elbe Textiles, for example!

My point here, is that I’ve realised that the dread of “sewing boring basics” is actually worse than the experience itself. My verdict: for me, it was actually a worthwhile endeavour and I think I’ll try to do it more often.

What about you? Do you sew “boring basics” or are you drawn to more “interesting” sewing?

If you want to see more of my sewing adventures, you can find me on Instagram here.