Holiday Inari
Pattern: Inari Tee from Named Clothing
Fabric: Thrifted flannel from Scrap in Richmond
Sewn up: December 2019
Pretty much the only word that comes to mind to anyone I interact with while wearing this shirt is “festive.” But that’s what I was going for with this, so I take it as a compliment (even though “festive” might be one of those words like “interesting” that could go either way!).
In Richmond, there is an amazing shop called Scrap – the concept is “art supply thrift store.” It’s a vibrant little room full of crayons, papers, paints, pipe cleaners, buttons – all rescued from the landfill and on sale for units of change you can find in your car. On my first visit, I left with a spool of pink string and 20 little blue envelopes – all for a couple of quarters. On my second visit, I found a scrap of this flannel for $3. I liked the idea of having some low-stakes fabric to experiment with, and it’s also fun to wonder who had this fabric before me and what they made (or planned to make but didn’t) out of it.
Usually plaid flannel is sewn up with buttons and collars into pajamas or hiking gear, so I thought a cropped T-shirt might be a fun departure and possibly graduate it into something I could wear to holiday parties. I went with the Inari tee, as it is dart-free and good for showcasing a print.
Once I sewed up the top, I felt like it needed something else to liven it up. Daunted by the plaid-matching challenge of cutting out sleeve cuffs as called for by the pattern, I decided to try replacing them with a ruffle – my first ruffle! And not just a regular ruffle – a fringed ruffle! The strands on some of the fabric pieces had unraveled during construction, revealing an exciting little bit of fringe at the edges. There are no true solid colors in this fabric, as all are woven at a diagonal with the cream base or with the other stripes they intersect with – but where the fabric unraveled, you got these pure bright moments of color. I liked the effect, and did some tests to find the strip and fringe color combo that felt best to me against the sleeve. (I did this while on the phone with my sister Katherine and thus have a record that I spent approximately ninety minutes testing different fringe options!!)
If you look closely on the top edges of these strips, you can see the brighter bits of fringe color I was excited about.
On my final ruffle piece (1.5x the length of the sleeve circumference), I combed out a quarter-inch of fringe and stay-stitched around the edge to keep it from fringing further for the rest of time. Bonus discovery – if you leave the edge fringed, no need to hem / add additional bulk to an already thick fabric!
One note of caution about such a skinny ruffle – it tends to want to stand out perpendicularly against the sleeve (clown-ruffle style), so I did two lines of top-stitching in an attempt to secure it down. It mostly worked, although sometimes it can’t be contained!
This is by far the most holiday-looking thing I own. I wore this to a friend’s Christmukkah party, my office’s holiday party, and to my sister’s for waffles on Christmas morning. Time will tell if it’s too festive to keep wearing into the non-December winter months!
My first fringe ruffle!
~ Photos by Lizzie Epstein - thanks sis!
Drawing process reel: Closet floor photo, pencil sketch, digital drawing.
