Polo Cubana… I think we had that for dinner last night.

You may recall that the Evil Monkeys were removed from my presence by the Grandparents for 10 days.  Or you may not.  I certainly do.  Ah, those peaceful, tidy ten days.

Now, you might think that I spent this time sewing.  Or (if you are Big In Japan) you might think I spent this time doing, you know, that stuff that grown-ups do when there are no Children of the Damned around… all over the house.  Sadly, in both instances you would be mistaken.  I am old.  I spent this blissful ten days alternating between frantic chore-doing and abject slothfulness in front of the TV.  Heavenly.

However, I did sew one thing.  And it was even for one of the Monkeys, which I think is pretty big of me, really.

‘Member how I was whining about not making any polo shirts this summer?  Well, I actually did make one polo-type shirt.  In fact, it was making this polo-type shirt that caused me to realize the true cubical nature of TLo.  Check it out. 

I used the custom block I drafted for TLo this spring.  My first version was a square-neck t-shirt so I had to alter the pattern to accommodate a collar.  I also was using an old long-sleeve shirt I got from my mom for the fabric and apparently I’d already used some of it for something else (I have not one clue what that was) so I didn’t have quite enough fabric.  Solution?  I made a yoke out of an awesomely matching poplin that I had in the stash.  Seriously.  Exactly the same color.  In the stash.

I would like to note that this almost never happens and you should be totally in awe of me.

Here’s the pattern with the original t-shirt on the left, the new yoke and collar on the right:

And here’s a close-up of the yoke and collar, which I did with knit on the top, poplin on the under-collar and no interfacing at all.

Here’s another cool thing: I didn’t have to do a real polo placket because of the seamed yoke.  Again, you should be envious of my mad dezign skillz, people.  Plus, for using a RTW shirt, so I didn’t have to hem the sleeves or the shirt hem.  Flippin’ genius. 

And if you’re wondering about TLo’s cubicalism, I think this pretty much says it all:

The nifty thing about drafting her own block is this:

When you put a Cube Shirt on Cube Girl, you get a nice flattering fit.  Go figure.

 

(That’s a First Day Of School crown on her head.  Everyone’ll be wearing them this year.  You’re jealous, right?)

Take Me To Cube-a

Despite her predictions to the contrary, TLo made it through the first day of school in the Big School.  First grade is so stressful, isn't it?  It sure is for me (it’s all about me, after all).  I'm trying to clothe TLo appropriately without having to make a dozen polo shirts (which I still find boring as hell).  

Luckily, I inherited 15 polo shirts from my friend's daughter who moved up to Junior High this year.  She's no longer required to wear polo shirts and I'm guessing (based on the look of sheer ecstasy she gave me when she handed over the shirts) that she won't be wearing polo shirts ever again in her life.  I can't say I blame her.

Now this girl wears, as might be expected of someone going into the 7th grade, a misses size small or a size 0 depending on the sizing system.  Regardless, they're misses shirts.  So why did I accept them?  Because, of course, they were free.  I figured I would just hold on to them until my kids approached 5th or 6th grade and see what happened.

Then a few days before school I had the thought that maybe I should just try these shirts on the kids.  You know, as a way to avoid making polo shirts myself.  Which I hadn't bothered to start doing.  The week before school started.  I mean, how bad could they be?  I'm sure lots of first graders wear women's shirts to school, right?  I was going to try them out.

Or more specifically, I decided to try them on TLo, who wears a size 12 shirt in shoulder width.  And a size 5 in length.  You know, not a "pear" or an "apple" or a "Y" or an "A".... no, she's a Cube.

And behold!  A women's size small polo shirt from Land's End makes the perfect polo dress for a cubical six year old. 

And even more surprisingly, a size 0 polo shirt from Aeropostale  makes the perfect polo dress for a cylindrical seven year old. 

Whoda thunk?

So now we have a lot of polo dresses.   And I didn't have to make a single one of them.

Um.  Of course, we have no appropriately-colored bike shorts for a cubical six year old to wear under the perfect polo dresses.

Guess what I'm doing this week?

Ah, Farewell Sweet Polo, We Hardly Knew Ye.

Here is the LAST THING I AM GOING TO POST ABOUT POLOS.  Ever.  Or at least until I think of something else I might want to say about polo shirts.  I am way sick of them at this point.  Also, my neighbor just gave me two shirts and a dress that her daughter outgrew.   We have enough polos to last awhile.   And speaking of dresses, here is the dress that she gave me:

Here is the dress that I made.  This was my last polo effort to date.  See?  It's a polo.  It's a dress.  It's a POLO DRESS.  Oooo.

(Sorry about the wacky skewed image, it's that stand-at-the-table-with-the-camera-over-my-head thing again.  I have to find the stepladder.)

BORING TECHNICAL DETIAILS: Basically, to make the dress pattern I took the bodice of my KwikSew polo pattern (aha!  something useful came out of it after all) and added extra width on each side seam tapering from nothing at the armscye to a half-inch at the bottom hem.  Then I added a big rectangle of gathered fabric for the skirt.  (I created the A-line shape for the bodice because I was afraid it would be too narrow for easy movement if I left it straight.  In retrospect, I didn’t need that added width at all.)

I didn't do much with the skirt on this one and it's a little floppy.  This particular article of clothing combined several "firsts" for me and that was just too much for my brain to deal with.  I couldn't add the extra brain-drain of trying to calculate even pleats with the very specific length of fabric I had.  Which leads me to my first "first".

Question: "Can you make a dress out of an adult-sized (albeit pretty large) polo shirt?"

Answer: "Why, yes.  Yes, you can.”

Not only was I able to squeeze all the bodice pieces into the top half of the old shirt, but I cut the sleeves from the old sleeves (thus utilizing the pre-made knit cuffs)

and used the collar (see this post about cutting down a collar). 

All that careful squishing gave me juuuuust enough fabric left over at the bottom to make the skirt. 

 

This photo is from the beginning of the school year.  SuperGirl here has grown a little since then so it fits her a little bit better.  It's still pretty floppy, though.  When I make more of these (like in the far far distant future) I might have to just cut them from actual yardage so I can have pleats instead of gathers.

So, what were  the other "firsts", you ask?  Honestly, I can't remember now.  Ack.  My brain is melted.  I have Polo Brain.   Clearly a case of Polo Brain requires extensive rest.  And possibly hot chocolate.

Oooo, but here is another “first”":  I just used Windows Live Writer to create this blog page and it is so cool!  I thought it would be dumb, but it’s way easier to do it this way than with Blogger’s tools.  So “Yay, Windows!”  Who woulda thunk?

Polo or rugby... what's the difference?

My husband would say "The difference between tw**s and Real Men".

(You can't see it, but I'm rolling my eyes. )

Honestly though, this is the most difficult question to find an answer for on the internet. No one seems to have devoted any bandwidth to this issue. Is it really as simple as solid vs. stripe? Maybe so.

Whatever. Here's my fourth polo/rugby shirt.




This one was made using the same pattern as the last, which I wrote about in this post.

There wasn't much difference in this one, except instead of cuting it from an adult-sized t-shirt I cut it from an adult-sized polo shirt . Which meant I had an adult-sized polo collar on hand. Neato! Time to experiment with adapting a large knit collar to a smaller size pattern. I find making collars out of knits unsatisfactory for the most part. They're usually bulky and awkward. But knit collars aren't always easy to come by, especially in the right color.

So, how to make a collar smaller? I dismembered the original shirt including trimming the collar away from the neckline. After cutting out and starting construction on the new shirt, I resized the collar. In this case I decided to have the collar meet up at the edge of the placket rather than offset the way it was in the red shirt. To scale the collar to my new shirt, I measured how long I wanted it to be by pinning it to the neckline starting at the front and marking the center of the neckline on the collar. Next I drew a straight line at the center marking on the collar and added a seam allowance. I cut the collar at the seam allowance and then laid the resized piece over the remaining piece. I trimmed this to match so I had two equal pieces.




I seamed it back up with a straight stitch, pressed the heck out of it and there you have it: kid-sized collar.




The rest of the construction was as usual. Piece of cake!

Mmmm... cake.

Polo, onward!

I'm already sick of them. However, I will perserver... persever... holy crap! How do you spell that?

I will continue on.

When last we left our story, I had made a very odd little blue polo shirt using KwikSew 3226 and added a vast array of alterations to the pattern. I decided in retrospect that KS 3226 was not the pattern for me, so I moved on to a different one.

Here, then, is my Second Polo Shirt. Despite her many many appearances on Go Fug Yourself, I used this Hillary Duff pattern from McCalls.



I liked the looks of the line drawing for the shirt and the jacket. I thought it would work out for the Great Uniform SWAP. I should have noticed that this shirt is veeeeery narrow in the body, but I didn't.



I find that I am repeatedly fooled by the line drawings of Big 4 patterns. You'd think I'd learn my lesson, but no. This instance was no different. The body was veeeeery narrow indeed. Even The Big One, whose ribs are showing, only just fit into this shirt. TLo would never have gotten it over her head.

In any case, I followed the instructions very closely for this first shirt, which is unusual for me. I usually glance through the pattern pieces and the instructions and then decide what I'm really going to do with the pattern. This time I followed the instructions as written (mostly) and the white shirt was the result.



This is actually much cuter in person, it did not photograph well. It has cute little ruffle details on the hem and sleeve hem, which I made from some scrap yardage of white seersucker I had leftover from summer.

I wasn't very happy with the collar opening on this one, because the heaviness of the collar drags it open and the slit is very low on the chest. I did like the cut of the shirt, however. It fits Skinny Minny Big One just right (this is seriously a bad sign about the actual design of this shirt, as that child is positively scrawny).

On the to the next trial: I decided to leave off the extra frills and ruffles on my second version and I used a standard rugby placket instead of the v-neck placket from the original pattern. This is the result.



NOTE: You may think that all my shirts are horribly skewed or lopsided or something. It's actually the camera angle, these shirts really are even on both sides, I promise! I take the photos on my cutting table, which comes well past my waist (good for a cutting table, not so good for trying to take photos). I guess I should get out a stepstool or something, but instead I hold the camera waaaay over my head and then try to get the correct angle through the screen display.

You won't pretend to be surprised by this amazing display of laziness, right?


I'm really pleased with this shirt, it fits The Big One perfectly and looks quite feminine. I also made this from an old long-sleeve t-shirt that I got from my mom (I think it was from Talbot's or Neimans or some such; the fabric is very beefy and of good quality).




So that's it for tonight. I'm off to watch Flash Forward.

And yes. I have MORE polo-related things to share. Next time on The Polo Channel: All Polo, All The Time.

Polo. It means “chicken”, right?

OK. So I just read this post (well, I had to, it's really really hard to write a post without actually reading it). Apparently I have a little too much to say about polo shirts. I surpise even myself. I'm afraid I'm going to be one of those people. You know, people who stand around at parties or soccer games and drone on and on and on and on and on... about model trains or low-carb diets or collecting pygmy elephants or whatever. It seems I'm like that with polo shirts. This is really weird, since as a general rule I detest polo shirts. This post is just the first, well second, of many many things I have to say about, yes, polo shirts.

Good grief.

I started out on the Polo Shirt quest with Kwik Sew 3226.


Unfortunately, I seem to be incapable of remembering that I usually really dislike KS patterns. They're sort of like frozen packages of diet chinese food: They seem like a good idea, but when I get them out of the package I'm always disappointed with the reality.

This KS pattern was like that. I chose it because I'd never made a polo shirt before and I had the suspicion that the placket would be tricky... too tricky to try to make one from BWOF or even Ottobre without picture instructions, even though I have several issues of both magazines with polo-like shirts. So I bought the Kwik Sew, because one thing I will say for them: they usually have excellent illustrations and instructions.

Unfortunately, they also seem to almost never make anything the way it's normally made. Case in point: this pattern doesn't do a 'typical' polo/rugby placket. It has this weird facing thingy that, when completed, forms a sort of floppy interior mess. I am of the opinion that needlessly excessive facings are pure evil. This one is a prime example.


Of course, I'd already cut out all the other pieces before I realized how awful the Floppy Facing would be. And of course, this shirt was part of my "let's see how many unwanted adult shirts we can use up for school uniforms" plan as well. Which is to say, I had a very limited quantity of fabric to work with (i.e. one 2XL-sized shirt's worth).

In the end, I found two useful rugby placket tutorials online: one here, apparently from Timmel Fabrics, although mysteriously you can't actually go to the Timmel Fabrics website. The other one is from Dawn at Two On Two Off. They both basically say the same thing, although Timmel's is more verbally descriptive and Dawn's has really good photos. Feeling more secure with a few pictures behind me, I scrapped the Floppy Facing and scrounged up enough remaining fabric to make a 'real' placket.


I can't say I did a very good job, but it was a place to start. The buttonholes are particularly disastrous, but I think that's mostly because I had the wrong needle in my machine and didn't realize until too late.

In any case, I plodded on. This first shirt was the result. I'll say right now that it's pretty dismal all things considered, but it was more of an experiment than an attempt at a perfected piece. I ended up changing the collar to a peter pan collar that I drafted myself, since I actually used an "old" (and, as far as I can tell, never worn) long-sleeved t-shirt I got from my mom. It didn't have a collar that I could cannibalize so I made this one instead.


No, those are not dust spots from my camera. The Big One has worn this shirt at least three times, which means it's basically destroyed from mysterious irrevocable spots. She is Very Messy.

I also gathered the cuffs of the sleeves with elastic, because the original pattern produced gargantuan sleeves... way too humongous for The Big One's little stick arms. The gathering had the added advantage of being more girlie.


I also thought I'd try out the decorative stitching on my sewing machine with a wing-needle, just to see what would happen. Nothing much, apparently. This was probably not the best fabric to try it on.


Since making this, my further efforts in the Polo Shirt quest have been better, especially since I completely changed my base pattern. All in all, I'm chalking this first one up to a learning experience. I learned:

A) how much fabric is provided for by a 2XL shirt (it will create an entire size 5 polo shirt or dress)

B) Kwik Sew patterns are just not for me. Maybe I'll remember that before I purchase another one. But probably not.

And C) despite owning approximately two thousand sewing reference books, not one -one- has any sort of instruction on how to sew a rugby/polo placket. And my multitude of sleeve placket instructions just don't quite cut it.



Clearly I have to purchase a few more books. It's for the children.

And The People Rejoiced...

The Great Uniform Interregnum has been ended! Long live the Great Uniform!

Or whatever.

Actually, I think the Great Uniform SWAP and the Hannah Andersson SWAP will have to form a power-sharing coalition. By consolidating their votes they can maintain complete control of the Sewing Room, sweeping aside the flimsy arguments of the I-Desperately-Need-A-New-Purse Party and the What-The-Hell-Am-I-Going-To-Wear-This-Winter Party. The Uni-Andersson Coalition will triumph in Sewing Room politics. And so, Citizens of the Sewing World, we move on to the order of the day. Which is: Polo.

Polo was invented about a billion years ago by some people in Persia who had way too much time on their hands. (Of course, it's my hypothesis that anyone who plays- let alone invents- any kind of sport has way too much time on their hands.)

Polo, like most sports, is a war game. In fact, I think it was originally played using the severed heads of vanquished foes or something like that. In any case, it's all about blood-thirsty battle and hacking your enemies into gorey pieces until they lie sobbing on the ground in a state of utter humiliation and/or death. This, of course, makes it the logical inspiration for elementary-school uniforms.

99% of the school uniforms in this town, indeed the entire country, involve some form of a polo. Sure, the school says you can wear a blouse or a "shirt", but does anyone actually dare to do such a thing? No. The Polo Syndicate clearly has a hold on the uniform market.

OK, so polo shirts are "basic" and "standard" and so (apparently) make good uniforms. I get that. They can also be easily purchased from various places in Hell-- I mean The Mall-- for a few nickles and a handful of beans. I'm sure there are sweatshops in Kenya or Hong Kong or Saskatoon filled with busy, consumption-ridden children creating the endless acres of polo shirts that fill our shops. I decided to save the children and make my own shirts.

I'm just that kind of person. I expect my Humanitarian Of The Year Award at any moment.


You know, I think I'll break this post up into multiple posts. I have a surprisingly large volume of things to say about polo shirts and the making thereof. Which is crazy, since I've only completed five. But I've been through several patterns and variations, so I think in the interest of having something to do over the next week (because I'm soooo short of things to do), and to keep this post from being longer than Gone With The Wind, I'll break it down.

And so, Citizens of the Sewing World, today I will simply leave you with this:

Ralph Lauren polo dress. Size 5. $47.50.


My polo dress. Size 5. I used an old shirt of my husband's... so whatever a slightly worn two-year-old shirt from WalMart is worth. Seriously. What, about five bucks?


Next time: YOU CAN TOTALLY MAKE YOUR KIDS' UNIFORMS FROM OLD POLO SHIRTS! Is that cool or what?