Thursday shirt and shorts project with the fish that did not want to co-operate

Hello, my dear blog family!

I sincerely hope that your day is a perfect one for each of you.It is nice and hot here . The temperature is 90 at 4pm in the afternoon. I have retired to the sanctuary of my sewing room and although it is always the hottest room in the summer and the coldest room in the winter time I have a small air conditioner that a neighbor gave me! Thank goodness for wonderful people who love to share with you! She is a nurse and  she was one of my classmates -a lifetime ago. I can remember her wanting to be a nurse way back to grade school and then her next step was being a "candy striper" who worked at the local hospital after school. She was an amazing gal and I do wish more of us could be like her in finding our way.

Well, let's just say that I am attempting to find my way this afternoon and I decided to start with the shirt to ease me into my goal. I love the colors of the shirt and the design  and shirts do not Hate me like pants do! :)So, here I have sewn the shoulders together and moving on up to the neck band.

I have marked 4 equal spots on  both the neck line and also on the neck band and then pinned them together . I have sewn the neck band together in the circle and also with a zig zag to hold it together until it is married together with the body. This little extra step REALLY saves the day for me because it enables me to match all the parts up equally. :)

The next step for me is to zig zag around the neckband and neckline. I used to NEVER be able to get both parts to line up correctly and stay put while I attempted to fly around that neck! One tip that works for me is that I position the neckband down  first and then lay the body of the shirts neck on top and for some reason it just does better for me.

Now I will take it to the serger to clean up the lines and make it look so much neater, but if you do not have a serger you can delete this step entirely.:)

I hope you can see the difference it makes.Next to top stitch around the neckband. Let's see IF I can get a picture to show you the difference in the look although it is a step you definitely do not have to do. I almost gave up on the idea because of my "drunk -sewing" -where I could not keep the machine sewing in a nice straight line.I really -really do try hard to pull this one off - just for my sake. :)See , it just looks so much cleaner and no threads going wild. :)

Next I top stitch around the neck band to make it look even nicer.

This is my neckline before I top-stitch it and I hope the picture will be clear so you can see the difference of when I top-stitch it.

My next step is to the fact that Miss Rosie wants some lunch in her bowl that my girlfriend mail to her yesterday.Miss Rosie loves getting gifts and also a sample of food!

She is such a  riot- you NEVER know what she will pull next. The reason she is in the plastic bag is that I had the pockets to the shorts that will match this shirt  stored in there to "protect" them from cat hair! She decided that it would not pass inspection with a cat hair somewhere! She was just soooo funny working her way in the plastic bag -going round and round and round until she was satisfied.

Here is one of the steps that I REALLY do not enjoy. I dislike this as much as I do cutting the project out.  Maybe it is because in my eyes I feel that you REALLY do have to have a nice clean -even hem  if you are going to have a project you enjoy. Hummm - well there is the other option - of putting a lettuce hem and I love , love them on my pj's that I did the other day. I also have a few shirts that I have done that way and I throughly enjoy them.

This is the finished project and it is like a 3xxx in store-bought shirts.

I think the design is cute and I  love fish and blue water - (See Chris - I love blue too!)

Well, the day is ending and I am quiet proud of myself that I got something accomplished . I have considered listing them on the blog for sale, but I am not sure what their quality is. I mean I try really hard to get it right-but it seems that I ALWAYS make at least one mistake.

Thank you for spending time with me and Rosie, my friends!And , may Joy fill your day!
:)