Tee with a flounce

OK so I've got a bit of a flounce thing going on at the moment. I just love this sleeve creation as it's so feminine and sort of fluttery which seems to go with this time of year.

I picked up this fairly heavy printed stretch fabric from Walthamstow on my recent visit. I did a deal with the lovely man who served me. As you can see the fabric has a large print design and it also had a band along the middle with a totally different design. I'd looked at this fabric for ages trying to work out how I would lay out my pattern to make the best use of the design feature. The problem was where the fabric had been left from the last cut. It came right after the main design so I it would come at just above hem level - not the best place. I only needed 1 metre for my T-shirt design but guessed I needed to buy at least 1.5 metres to make sure I got the pattern fitted in the right places so, having worked out that I needed my 1.5 metres to start from about 0.5 metre from the cut edge, I cheekily explained my predicament to the salesman and asked if he would either sell me 2 metres for the price of 1.5 or cut off 0.5 a metre before starting the measurement. I was surprised but delighted he cut the 2 metre length but only charged me for 1.5!! Just goes to show it costs nothing to ask but he got a very happy customer.

 Here is a close up of the sleeve with flounce cuff and the back view.


So this is just a basic long sleeved Tee with flounce sleeve cuff. The fabric is quite heavy and was so easy to work with. I did sew most of it with the sewing machine and then serged the seam allowances to finish but I actually just serged the side seams and sleeve seams in one go. In all it only took a few hours to make but the design and layout of the pattern took me a couple of days before I got up enough courage to get my rotary cutter out.

I started by joining the shoulder seams and used some stabilising tape and then attached the band. I cut this from a length of the band design and I think it works well.

There wasn't quite enough distance between the main design and the background to cut the sleeves without catching the repeating pattern but I think it draws your attention to the flounce sleeves more than if it hadn't. What do you think?

Have you manged to negotiate any fabric bargains recently? It certainly gave me a great feeling to know I had bagged a bargain and then made an exclusive garment from it.