Modified Metro T-Shirt

I made some good progress on rebuilding my handmade wardrobe in 2019. The biggest hole I had to fill was in my long-sleeved knit top drawer. Recently I sewed another striped Liesl + Co. Metro T-Shirt to fill space in that drawer.

I used the same pattern that I drafted for the narrow shoulder adjustment experiment I performed on my first Metro. I did a 5/8" high round back adjustment, a 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment and a 1 1/4" full bicep adjustment the last time I drafted the pattern.

This time, Ilowered the neckline by 1.25" to make it more of a scoop neck. I also narrowed the shoulders by another 3/8" for a total of 5/8" narrowed.

I only had 43" of fabric, which wasn't enough to cut full-length sleeves. I ended up putting sleeve bands on to eke more length out of the sleeve.

I sewed the top on my serger, and cover-stitched the neckband and hems.

This photo really shows the curvature of my upper back and neck. I was a little bit appalled when I noticed it. My husband says I've always looked like that, but I'm not so sure.  In any case, this photo makes it easy to see why I have such trouble getting the shoulders and neckline of a top to sit in the right place. I've gotten a lot closer with my combination forward shoulder and high round back adjustment, but I'm still not totally there.  Maybe there's only so close you can get when you are shaped like this? I don't know.

I used a cotton rib knit that I picked up at a remnants store here in Bogota. The store is located on the top floor of a sportswear store and appears to sell remnants of fabrics used to make the clothes in the store, although I don't know for sure whether that is true. The remnants are all under $3 a yard, which keeps me going back.

They have a lot of knits that are marked as cotton, although the first fabric I bought there, marked as cotton/lycra, definitely had a fair amount of synthetic in it. This particular rib knit feels like cotton/lycra to me, though.

I was concerned about the recovery of this knit, so I cut the neckband at about 80 percent of the length of the neckline rather than my usual 85 percent. This worked well.

This pattern has a looser fit with a higher neckline than the other t-shirt patterns I've used. It's more of a relaxed fit without being slouchy. I usually gravitate towards tops that have lower necklines and are slightly more fitted, but this pattern has a place in my stash for when I want something a little more casual.  I do plan to lower the neckline about 3/4"-1" the next time I sew it, but other than that, I'll continue as is.

This is my third make from the pattern - I'll be sharing the second one next month along with a tutorial I wrote for the Oliver + S blog on how to hack it into a turtleneck.