A trio of tops - my love affair with Jalie continues ...

The arrival of my new cover stitch machine coincided with the discovery that my wardrobe is seriously lacking some basic long-sleeve t-shirts – an essential for the British winter. Because I was so pleased with my Jalie scarf collar top (blogged about here), I thought I would turn to Jalie for a simple t-shirt pattern. I picked out Jalie 2806 and thought it was so quick and easy that I whipped up three!

Here’s the first one – ‘the flower print one’ made in a rayon/lycra knit.

The pattern gives you a choice of necklines and sleeves that you can mix and match. Here’s the pattern envelope.


I made the gathered neck with three-quarter length sleeves. It’s very straight forward to make – the most difficult part is attaching the neckline band. You need to take a little care to make sure the gathers are distributed evenly and that you sew the band on so that the width is exactly right all the way round.

So, here’s the second one – ‘the Liberty print one’. (I’m not modelling this one – I mean, how many pictures of me in a t-shirt do you need to look at?!)

Because Liberty of London is so famous for its cotton lawn, you might not be aware that they also make knit fabrics, but they do. As it is a cotton knit, it isn’t drapey like the rayon knit and doesn’t have the same kind of stretch or recovery. But it makes a nice, beefy t-shirt that is good to wear with jeans and the prints and colours they use are interesting. I extended the sleeves to make them full length for this version.

Lastly, as I had got my confidence up by now, is ‘the luxury one’ made from a 100% silk jersey purchased from Gorgeous Fabrics.

This picture doesn’t really do it justice. The fabric has a wonderful lustrous sheen and drapes perfectly. The top works worn casually but also looks very nice and dressy with a skirt.

I am quite enchanted with my cover stitch machine. Of course it is perfectly possible to make hems on knits without one but I do like how the machine can so easily make a knit garment look professional. Here’s a close-up of the hem (both the outside and inside) on the flower print top

The triple row of stitching is on the outside and inside the looper thread ‘covers’ the raw edge. It looks super-neat and you can stretch it as far as the fabric will go without the stitches breaking. You can also do a double row of stitching, rather than a triple row if you want to (which is what I did for the other two tops).

So, now that I have some tops, my winter wardrobe building is going to continue with a classic black pencil skirt but more on that soon ….