Draft a Tank Top Pattern

Tracing off patterns from ready to wear garments that you have in your closet is a great way to recreate the fit and style of a garment you know you already love. so I'm going to show you how to do that with this tank top. So this tank top I wore all summer and it's starting to look a little ratty. So I wanted to make a new one in some fun fabrics of my choosing. So to trace this off you're gonna need a piece of pattern paper that's at least a couple inches larger on all sides than half of your garment.

So I've marked my center front and center back of my tank top. And I've drawn a line on my pattern paper and I'm aligning the center front with that drawn line. And I'm using pattern weights to hold my tank top down onto my paper. If you don't have pattern weights you can put a piece of cardboard under this paper and use straight pins to pin your garment down into the cardboard to hold that there. And I'm going to use this tracing wheel.

It's different from the wheel that you use to trace your pattern markings onto your fabric with chalk paper. This tracing wheel, the tines are much much sharper and that's made for making holes in paper. So it's made for tracing off patterns. You could also use just a pencil. So we're just going to trace around the perimeter of this garment, can go a little ways past this edge so that you get a nice cross hair to match up with, you press hard enough to make holes in your paper.

And as we're tracing, this is just kind of a guideline. So when we take our garment off of the paper and we're drawing, we're kind of connecting the dots with our pencil, we can trew up those lines and make sure everything is square. If you're just using a pencil, could definitely do that. Just use your fingers to hold down the edge of the garment and trace with your pencil. Now I traced the back neck line edge and since the side seam and the hem and the arms are the same for the front and back, the only thing that's different on this pattern is the back scoop in the front scoop.

So I traced the back scoop now to get the front scoop I can either take my tracing wheel and simply trace that front scoop through the fabric because those tines aren't going to hurt the fabric at all. It's just like putting a pin through your fabric. Or you can hold it down and kind of pull that front layer back and trace with your pencil along that front scoop line. So once you get both of those traced off, take your tank top off of your paper and we can follow our lines. Since the side seam is mostly a straight line, I can find my little crosshair at the bottom and the lower edge is going to be mostly a straight line.

We want to make sure our center front at the hem is at a right angle, the center front fold and the hem is at a right angle there. And then it kind of curves up a little bit. So we're going to trace that in. We want to make sure this join is at a right angle as well. And for our neck lines, you can freehand draw in that curve.

Or if you have a French curve ruler, this is a great place to use it. So we want the center front again to be at a right angle for at least quarter to half inch. So you draw this in for the front and the back scoop. And there's the back scoop, so you can kind of sketch it in or use your ruler to trace in all of the dots. And then we're going to add seam allowances to the side seam and the hems.

So I'm adding a quarter inch seam allowance to my side seam. I'm going to add an inch to the bottom. Actually no, I'm going to add a half inch to the bottom. When I mark it on my fabric, I like to mark an inch so that I can turn my raw edge up. Oops, there's half inch.

There we go, so connect to those lines. There's my half-inch hem allowance, quarter inch seam allowance. This is on the fold, now for the arms and the neck lines. We're not going to add any seam allowance because we are going to be binding those. We are going to add a quarter inch seam allowance to the shoulder seam.

So there's our quarter inch right there, then our scoop kind of comes down. Now since we have our front and our back tank pattern on the same piece of paper we're going to have to trace this off again. So you can trace off the back pattern onto another pattern piece and then just cut it away right here. So this will be your front pattern and then you'll have both of your front and your back. So let's take a look at this.

So my front and my back and I did a little measuring and a little math here because we're going to cut a front body piece and a back body piece out of our knit fabric. We also need to cut arm line and neck line binding. So to figure out how long that binding needs to be. I measured my arm line or I measured my seam line. So along this front scoop, it was eight and a half.

You'd want to double that because this is on the fold. And then the back was six and five eights. So I'm measuring at about a quarter inch in from the right edge to get my measurement. So you would double that, add those together to get your neck line length. And since I'm doing it in the round, so these shoulder seams are going to be stitched when I attach my neck line binding.

So we're going to remove those seam allowances, a quarter inch seam allowance on each side. So that's removing one inch in seam allowances and then you take that measurement, multiply it by between 80 and 90%, depending on how much stretch your knit fabric has. If it's a little bit more of a stable knit, not as much stretch, multiply that by 90% but my jersey knit fabric has kind of a lot of stretch. So I multiplied by 80% and I came up with 23 and three quarter inches for my neck line binding. You want to do this same thing for your armscye bindings so each armscye is nine inches so multiply that by two for the front and the back.

Well, multiply by 80% so I cut two 14 inch long armscye bindings. And these strips are one and three quarter inches wide. So we're going to have two arms line strips and one neck line strip and a front and a back. So here are our pieces and I have fused knit stay tape to all of my curves. And I cut my back out of a contrasting fabric just for fun but you could of course use the same fabrics.

And here are my bindings, two arm line bindings and a neck line binding. And I'm going to fuse my stay tape onto this one remaining armscye just to show you how that goes on. And this knit stay tape is really great because it stabilizes your fabric on a curve. And this fabric is from Girl Charlee. So I got really, really cute fabric But it is a rayon cotton blend which means it's very slinky.

It's kind of like trying to sow water. Sometimes it just slips right through your fingers but that means when the project is finished it has such a nice drape and feel. So I love it for garments, and that's Girl Charlee, Charlee is C-H-A-R-L-E-E, that's girlcharlee.com. They have a ton of cool colors and prints and a lot of different types of knit fabrics. So this knit stay tape is called sewkeys brand by .

And this is the more than extremely fine SSI type stay tape. And I'm attaching it, just using a high steam setting on my iron. And since my knit is a rayon cotton blend, I'm using the synthetic heat setting and the stay tape isn't going to add, there's my steam, the stay tape is not going to add any stiffness to my seam or any heaviness or anything like that is just adding stability to the curve. And to help support that 'cause we're going to be stitching those exact stitch on these curves. So the first step is to align our fabric pieces with right sides together into our shoulder seams.

And we did our shoulder seams with a quarter inch seam allowance. And that can be done with a straight stitch. You'd want to press those seam allowances open. Now for our neckline bindings, we're going to bind our neck line next. So let's get our neckline binding.

You'll notice my strips, I folded them in half with long sides together and pressed. So for the neck line, I'm just going to open that up and I'm going to stitch my short ends to make that into a little round. And when you're stitching knits, you don't want to start stitching right at the very edge of the fabric because especially these slinky knits might get pushed down into the throat plate. So start a stitch or two in from the edge and then backstitch, press all of your seams open. Now we're going to quarter mark our binding and our neck line.

So it's a quarter mark and folding it in half with the seam at one end to mark that and then match that center with the seam and mark those ends and same thing with our neck line. I'm going to start my quarter marking with the center front and center back since the front and back scoop are differing. It has a different drop in the front and the back, our shoulder seams aren't going to give us a true quarter mark. So aligning your seam and aligning the right edge, find the center front and back, and then bring the center front and back points together to find your trew quarter mark, which is going to wind up just in front of the shoulder seam. Then we're just going to match up our quarter marks.

I like to start my binding with the seam at the center back. So since we are binding this seam, we're going to stitch only one. So we're unfolding this binding and we're going to stitch it to the wrong side of the shirt fabric. And then we're going to wrap it around to the right side and then finish that off with a double needle stitch. There we go.

Make sure it's not twisted as you're pinning. Now we're going to select a zigzag stitch on our machine. I like to start stitching at the back. And since this binding is so much shorter than the neck as you can see how much shorter it is. We're going to stretch that binding to match our neck line edge.

And that is so it, when it's turned under, it'll lay nice and flat against that curve and curve around really nicely. So I'm going to get my needle down and then I can start gently stretching the fabric, gently stretching binding to match the fabric edge making sure all my raw edges continue to stay even And I'm using a quarter inch seam allowance here as well. Make sure the seam allowances remain open as you're stitching over those shoulder seam allowances. When you're stretching this binding to match your neck line edge, we apply even pressure in front of and behind the needle. So you're not pulling this fabric and keeping it from going under the presser foot.

You're just stretching the binding and still allowing the feed dogs to gently pull the fabric and glide it under the presser foot Back stitch, at the end of the stitch. And then when we fold this over toward the front it's going to cover up that stitching line. But first, we want to bind our arm holes as well but these I've left in the flat. So I've left the side seams open so that we can bind it with one long strip and not have it be a circle because the armscye is a little bit of a smaller circle than the neck line. It can be kind of tricky to get under the presser foot and keep everything flat.

So what we're going to do it's the same process, it's just in the flat. So we are going to quarter mark, so mark the center there and then bring these to meet in the center and mark those folds And then mark the center of each armsye. It is the same process, match your quarter marks matching the raw edges and we're stitching the binding to the wrong side of the fabric so that we are going to wrap it around toward the front side. Take that under the needle with your zigzag stitch using quarter inch seam allowance, get your needle down in the fabric and then you can start stretching it to match the raw edge of the shirt. Make sure that these edges also match up.

All right, so you would do the same thing to the other armscye as well, very same process. And then to wrap this around, you going to fold that other raw edge of the binding to kind of meet in the center and then fold it over so that it covers up that previous stitching line. And that's just going to curve really nicely around all of those edges. 'Cause we've cut our binding along the crosswise grain. So typically the crosswise grain of a knit has the most stretch.

You don't want to cut your binding strips on the bias because that's a little too much stretch. And that gets to be a little unruly. Can give these edges press first, if you would like I can help flatten everything out. And if you need to trim down these seam allowances at all, you can do that. You shouldn't need to but just in case you're stitching wasn't exactly even or something you can trim that down to make sure that that binding covers up that previous stitching line.

So we're going to fold this around our raw edges and then I'm going to put a double needle on my machine and then we're going to come back in and we're going to just edge stitch this fold right here to secure that and give it a nice finish. So I have a double needle on my machine and I'm going to take my bound edges and stitch using a straight stitch. We're going to line up that needle that left needle so that it is fairly close to that fold. I'm using a thread that matches my fabric so that if my stitching gets a little bit wobbly it's not as noticeable as if you were using a contrastive thread. I'm using my stiletto here too.

This is my super duper sharp almost pin like tool to help that fold stay exactly where I want it to as it's going under the needle. And since I do definitely want these seams to have stretch to them, I'm using an all-purpose thread. You could also use a polyester thread because an all purpose thread is a polyester core cotton wrapped thread. So that polyester core gives that thread a little bit of give, it's not stretchy, but it has a little bit of give more so than 100% cotton thread which when stretched at all would just snap. And if you see your fabric bunching up at all or creating a raised lump between those needles just loosen your tension a little bit.

So we are sowing through kind of a lot of layers right now. And this double needle is a three millimeter double needle. So the needles are three millimeters apart. We're just following our curve. All right and there is our armscye binding finished really nicely.

I've just stitched right around those curves. Once we give it a press flat, it's going to help keep everything really nice and flat. We're going to do the same thing to the neck line. And as I mentioned, I like to start at the center back. We're not stretching anything as we are stitching this down, we are just lining this fold over our previous stitching line, securing this binding down.

So there is our neckline binding, and it looks nice and professional, give that a press and you would bind your other arms, obviously at the very same way. And then the next step is to stitch the side seams. So I need to get my ballpoint needle back on my machine. And then we're going to stitch up our side seam. So I've got my ballpoint needle back on my machine and I'm going to just align my side seam here.

I'm going to stitch using that quarter inch seam allowance that we added into our pattern. You definitely want to make sure right here at the underarm seam, the bindings are matched up perfectly. And we can use a straight stitch for our side seam because we don't need any stretch in this seam. Since it's not going around the circumference of the body, it doesn't need stretch. So align your raw edges.

And we will stitch and this, my stiletto is super handy right here too, so that I can keep these edges perfectly aligned under my presser foot And the back stitch here. Okay, so there is our side seam. Now the binding, we do have these binding raw edges which we don't have our neckline binding because we did the binding in the round. So you can push and press these seam allowances either to one side or since it's kind of bulky. You might want, you might want to press that open and then put a line of straight stitching just along the binding length to secure just that binding seam allowance down.

And that is just enough so you get a little straight stitch on the right side but it's just enough to secure that binding seam allowance down. So you do the same thing to the other side as well. And then at that point you would have this other armscye bound, you'd have your other side seam stitched. So let me jump to this one. And I did this one in the seam fabric but the construction is all the same.

So I've got everything bound, I've got both of my side seams stitched. Now the last step is the hem. So for the hem, we added a half inch hem allowance. So to mark that I like to go, to mark one inch on the fabric and then fold the raw edge up to meet that line. And you can finish your hem allowance off with the double needle hem.

It looks super nice, but since I have the ballpoint needle back on my machine I'm going to show you what a zigzag stitch looks like in the hem. You can fold that up and press before you pin or you can finger press. We definitely do want stretch in the hem because it's going to stretch around the body. So select a zigzag stitch and I like to start out a side seam. I'm just aligning, that lower edge fold would be the edge of my presser foot just to finish off this lower edge You could throw a line of feasible stay tape in your hand as well if you find that your hem is getting stretched out at all by going under your presser foot with that zigzag stitch but mine is turning out really nice.

And it's got a lot of stretch in that zigzag stitch which is perfect. Make sure everything is laying flat as it's going under the presser foot and that your fabric isn't getting stretched. It's not getting caught on the machine bad or anything, and getting stretched out. Back stitch at the end of your seam. And then you'd want to take your hem and give it a press.

And if you have some excess right here you want to trim that down, close to the stitching line and then your tank is finished and bound and looks professional. And since we traced it off of a garment that you already had in your closet, you know you're going to love the fit and the cut of it. But we get to stitch it up in fabrics of our choosing.