#42: Teal Turtleneck

What. A. Weekend. I had fun celebrating my anniversary at Universal Studios, but was also woken Sunday morning to some awful news that has still got me asking, "Am I dreaming? Did yesterday really happen?" I'm so glad I have God's truths to hold onto while I try to figure out what the heck happens next. Step by step....

Gratefully, I was able to take some time to focus my energy on a project yesterday. It was like my calm within the storm.

I found this teal turtleneck at a local thrift store a few months ago for a buck. But, as you can see, I was swimming in it! Let's see how I took this from swimming in the stormy sea of my weekend to dry land.

Before: Teal Turtleneck

Before: From behind

The first thing I did was chop off the sleeves between the base of the neck and the underarm area.

Chopped off the sleeves

Next, I folded, pinned, and sewed a new hem around each arm hole.

Then I flipped it inside out, tried it on, and carefully pinned the sides to reduce some of the bollowy-ness and the gaping arm holes. I carefully took it off, sewed the sides up where I had pinned, and cut off the excess. I also sewed about an inch of width off of the turtle neck.

Cutting off some of the side material

To keep the edges neat, I did a fake-serge on the edges I had just cut: I laid the cut edge under the center of my presser foot, and zig-zag stitched all the way down, wrapping one side of the zig-zag around the edge of the cut material.

Sorry so blurry!

Once I had adjusted the size on the sides, I pinned and sewed a dart on each side of the bust so it wouldn't gap at the bust.

Pinned dart

Sewn darts

 Time to add some pizazz! Inspired by another shirt I have, I cut 5 long strips of various lengths off of the sleeves in this shape:

Not sure what this shape is called

I had read about lettuce-edging online, and thought this would be a good project on which to try it out!

I chose the zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine, and did the same thing I had done with the fake-serge in that I lined up the rounded edge in the center under my presser foot, and sewed a zig-zag stitch around the edges, but I also stretched out the material as I fed it through.

Stretching and lettuce-edging

As you can see, when the material is stretched, it comes out on the other side with a wavy pattern.

Once I had lettuce-edged the rounded side of each strip, I arranged and pinned each of the strips down the front of the shirt starting at the collar.

Pinning lettuce-edged strips

Pinned lettuce-edged strips

 I sewed down the straight, pinned edge of each strip and cut off any excess material.

And I was done!


Here's the swimmingly-bland before photo again:

Before: Teal Turtleneck

 And here's how I kept my head above water:

After: Sophisticated Teal Turtleneck

After: From Behind

So there you have it! With this storm analogy, I am reminded of the Bible verse I taught years ago in Sunday school:

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock." ~Matthew 7:24-25

***God, please help me to keep my foundation on You so that I can weather this storm. Amen.***

Until next time, blessings.