A Simplicity 4076 rant

I had 30 minutes to sew yesterday - and I thought I'd knock off my pink t-shirt from my list of UFOs. All I needed to do was hem the t-shirt, hem the sleeves, and attach the sleeves.

Gah! My sleeve hem stretched out horribly, the thread kept breaking every 3 seconds, and now, the t-shirt looks like a hot mess.

I am going to fix this, really. The t-shirt shall just be sleeveless.



However, my rant is about the completely horrible instructions. I've made up this pattern before (the twist version of Simplicity 4077), and the instructions are hopeless. They have you construct the twist, then just fold and sew the front neck (can anyone say gaping?) and then fold and sew the back neck, and then attach together. No mention about stabilising knits, nothing.

Ok, I challenge *anyone* to make this t-shirt work as written. F***ing horrible instructions.

Mostly, I'm annoyed at myself. I did some things differently - I used elastic in the front and back necklines to prevent gaping, and that did work. But, I did do the front and the back necklines separately, and I'm kicking myself about that, cause it looks horribly home-made.

I also interfaced the hem to stabilise it, which worked ok, but didn't interface the sleeve hem - and it stretched horribly out of shape. The sleeves look like bat wings. Aargh.

Ok, I'll stop the stream-of-consciousness rant now. I don't have time to deal with this, but I'll either remove the horrible sleeves, use elastic (or the awesome Jalie magic method) and finish the armholes.

More likely, I'll toss it in the trash (oh, so tempting) and start over - this time, ignoring all written instructions.