Adding a Shirttail Hem to the iCandy Summer Tee

I mentioned that I had made another iCandy Summer Tee, but that I had kind of a high-low thing going on with the hem. I absolutely love the pattern, but I felt that the hem was just a little fiddly. My opinion for sure, others might think it's great.

With the first top that I made, I ended up just cutting the back off and making a straight hemline. This is the tee with the lace back. You can find the original post HERE.

My second tee, looks exactly the same from the front, although this time I used 2 coordinating knits to create the top.

From the side you can see that the back is longer than the front.

You get a better idea of the hem with it laying flat. What's nice about the hemline is that it hangs over parts that we may not wish to emphasize, if you know what I mean ;), and the hemline is also quite easy to sew. No fiddly edges to deal with.

So here's what I did. As you can see, the back of the top is longer than the original pattern. I lengthened the back pattern piece  2".

In order for the front to gracefully flow into the back, the front side edge will also need to be lengthened.

To do this, begin by matching up the front and back pattern pieces and overlap the seam allowance. The seam allowance on this pattern is 1/4". Remember, the hem will not match as the back is already longer than the front.

Tape a piece of paper to the hemline of both the front and back pattern pieces.

Add 2" to the back hemline. Now draw in the hemline. When drawing the line in, just draw it in. Once the desired line is drawn in, go back and clean up the line with a ruler and if you have a hip curve or a French curve, you can clean up the curved lines. If you don't have a curved ruler, this is such a small area and it doesn't affect the fit, so I think you can eye it and get a fairly nice curved line.

Now simply cut on the lines that you drew in and your pattern is ready to go!

After I made my first top, I received a message from Julia of https://titesmains.wordpress.com/ She said that she had made a few of them, loves them and wears them all the time. You can find her post on the tops HERE. You can see in her picture that she too cut the back hemline off and made it straight across.

If you would like to give the top a try,you can find the pattern HERE. Sadly, it only comes in a medium size, but they do give some pointers on how to enlarge it a little if you would like to give it a try. And if you do give it a try, I hope you'll try out the curved hemline. Hey, if you don't like it, you can always cut it off!!!!
Enjoy!
Rhonda