Lettuce Edge Shirt

 My daughter has more clothes than the rest of us put together, I think. But in the morning when I need to throw an outfit together for her, I can never find anything! Lately I've had trouble finding solid-color shirts for her patterned pants. So, while in the middle of very slow moving Christmas/holiday sewing which really requires all the time I have and more, I decided to make DD a shirt. =)

I have always wanted to try doing a lettuce (wavy) edge instead of a hem on the bottom of the shirt and on the sleeves. I've never done it before. So here was the perfect opportunity. A little flair on an otherwise very plain item of clothing. I did a Google search on waffle edge, ripple edge, wavy edge.... (sighs) Eventually a some links for lettuce edge appeared. Phew. My brain......

I first practiced on a scrap of knit fabric (you need a stretchy fabric to get the desired effect.) Good thing, too! My sewing machine ate the first few attempts. Yikes! I had been messing around with the stitch length and width without direction. Not good! I finally followed the advice on one link and set my stitch width to 3mm. I left the stitch length alone this time, and instead decided to follow the link's advice again and just stitch around the entire hem and each sleeve three times. (zig-zag stitch, with the zig on the fabric and the zag off the edge) I really like how it came out. Pic 2 is the hem, Pic 3 is one sleeve, and Pic 4 is the second sleeve, just for comparison. I have to say it felt utterly rebellious to stretch the heck out of the knit as I sewed. Anyone familiar with sewing knits knows that there's a definite learning curve. A lot of time is spent learning how to keep the fabric from stretching while you sew! So this was a little counter-intuitive, but it felt kinda good to go against the rules for a change! I'll post modeling shots when it's done.

Idea conceived yesterday, shirt finished today. I love that. =)