Sprout Pattern hack! Make any tee a Concord tee
It should be clear by now that I really, really love the Concord tee pattern from Sprout Patterns/Cashmerette. I have never in my life had a tee shirt that fit so well. Mass-produced tees are always so baggy and boxy and just generally not flattering. They're fine for painting the house in or working in the yard, but even "girly" tees just make me feel frumpy because the armscyes are always all baggy and weird across the front of the body. Not so with the Concord because it's been patterned for--shocker--boobs. So, the fit, the fit! In fact, i said to myself, "I wish all my tee shirts fit like this..." And then i thought, well, couldn't they? So i gave it a shot.
So, i basically just used the extant pieces as pattern pieces, transferring the notches to the newly-cut-down seams. I retained the old shirt's shoulder seams and neckband finish. I could have used the old shirt's sleeves as raw material & cut them down using the Concord sleeves as a pattern, but instead i used some of the surplus fabric from an earlier Sprout pattern to make cute contrast sleeves in a fun print ("Jazz Fusion" by some random person on Spoonflower). Pretty psyched about the possibility of using up the extra fabric you get along with a Sprout pattern to do similar mods like this one in future.
Now i have a customized iteration of a Parchman Hour tee, and it fits a million times better, too!
Incidentally, it's really cool to see where that play has gone in ther intervening years. UNC and PlayMakers helped the playwright, Mike Wiley, to develop it, first staging a student production as a partnership between UNC and Duke students (the play ran on both campuses, and then toured to several theatres and community centers in NC, even playing some shows in Alabama near Parchman). Then we did the professional premiere at PRC from which I got this shirt.
It has gone on to run at Cape Fear Regional Theatre in Fayetteville, NC, Lee Street Theatre in Salisbury, NC, and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. Now it's set to go up at Norfolk's Virginia Stage in the fall. Really, i wish every theatre in the nation would mount this show. It remains one of my favorite productions i've ever been part of.
This is a Concord tee from Sprout patterns in an inkblot print that one of my surface design students made several years ago. After i cut the pattern out, i decided to concurrently use it as a template to recut a favorite tee shirt of mine from the production of Mike Wiley's The Parchman Hour at PlayMakers Repertory Company back in 2011.
Here i've laid out the back piece of the Concord tee on the shapeless Parchman Hour tee.
This image makes it pretty clear what's different about the fit of the Concord compared to standard tees--the shaping in the armscyes and side seams is key!
So, i basically just used the extant pieces as pattern pieces, transferring the notches to the newly-cut-down seams. I retained the old shirt's shoulder seams and neckband finish. I could have used the old shirt's sleeves as raw material & cut them down using the Concord sleeves as a pattern, but instead i used some of the surplus fabric from an earlier Sprout pattern to make cute contrast sleeves in a fun print ("Jazz Fusion" by some random person on Spoonflower). Pretty psyched about the possibility of using up the extra fabric you get along with a Sprout pattern to do similar mods like this one in future.
Now i have a customized iteration of a Parchman Hour tee, and it fits a million times better, too!
Incidentally, it's really cool to see where that play has gone in ther intervening years. UNC and PlayMakers helped the playwright, Mike Wiley, to develop it, first staging a student production as a partnership between UNC and Duke students (the play ran on both campuses, and then toured to several theatres and community centers in NC, even playing some shows in Alabama near Parchman). Then we did the professional premiere at PRC from which I got this shirt.
It has gone on to run at Cape Fear Regional Theatre in Fayetteville, NC, Lee Street Theatre in Salisbury, NC, and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, MN. Now it's set to go up at Norfolk's Virginia Stage in the fall. Really, i wish every theatre in the nation would mount this show. It remains one of my favorite productions i've ever been part of.
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