Last revised 12 August 2010 PONCHO SHIRT Were it not for a tendency to tear out under the arms, this shirt would be perfect for travel. It folds as flat as a pillowcase for easy packing. The large pockets can hold your knitting, a paperback book, and a snack to save you from trying to bend over in a coffin-sized seat to get at your carry-on bag, and the split tail lets you put the pockets _over_ your seat belt. If you should get a chance to lie down, it's quite comfortable to sleep in. When made of a heavy, sun-blocking fabric, it stands out from your body to be cool in hot weather, and yet it fits nicely over another shirt to provide a bit of extra warmth when the weather turns cool. Because the tails are split, you can make the shirt as long as you please, and conceal the ugly upper part of your pants without depriving yourself of access to your side pockets. You must displace the tail to get at your hip pockets, but you can do so without appearing to be performing in a strip act. Poncho shirts are also good for gardening, because they combine the sun protection of long sleeves with the freedom of movement of short sleeves, and you can use the front tail as an apron to gather up produce, if you should do a bit of harvesting when you came out prepared only to weed. If you forgot your bandanna, you can use the tail or sleeve to mop your brow. A poncho shirt can be used as an all- enveloping apron to protect other clothing, but remember that the sleeves are as wide as they are long. If the sleeves are so much as elbow-length, the long dangling tails can be downright dangerous in the kitchen. If the shirt-tails are long, bear in mind, when using the facilities, that lifting the shirt- tail in front does not lift the shirt-tail in back. Making a poncho shirt: easier done than said ============================================= Cutting out:  ------------ Cut or tear a thread-straight piece 60" long and between 39" and 50" wide. Wider fabric makes longer sleeves; longer fabric makes longer flaps at the bottom. Fold it in half lengthwise, carefully matching edges and patting out all wrinkles. (Pins may help.) Fold in half crosswise, ditto. Keep the wrong side out so that you can mark on it with a #2 pencil. (Marks made with tailor's chalk and erasable pens are too fuzzy and wide.) Now that it's folded in quarters, mark a point 10" from the crosswise fold (the shoulder) and 11" from the lengthwise fold (the center front and back). Draw a line along the true bias from this point to the selvage, slanting toward the hem-to- be. (Moving the under-arm point down will make the armhole bigger; moving it out will make the bust measurement looser.) Draw a line on the straight grain, 13" from the center fold, extending from the hem toward the bias line. Put the 12" mark of a tape measure on the underarm point, swing it until the zero mark touches the straight-grain line, draw the side seam. Before the next step, put dressmaker's carbon inside the fold, so that you mark left and right at once. You need not mark both front and back. (In heavy fabric, it may be necessary to mark twice.) Draw a circle of 5/8" radius around the underarm point. (It is easiest to do this by measuring 5/8" in a lot of places.) Draw tangent lines marking 5/8" seams. This sharp curve cannot be stitched freehand, nor can you guide into and out of the circle by eye, but the straight markings need not be more than an inch or two long, unless you feel the need of a guide on the straight part of the seam. Cut the three straight lines through all four thicknesses. Snip the shoulder fold at center front-center back to mark it. Unfold once, leaving the shirt folded in half lengthwise. Decide which is the front and which is the back. On the front, mark a straight-grain line intersecting the shoulder-fold 3 1/2" from the center fold. Mark a crossgrain line intersecting the center fold 4 1/2" from the shoulder fold. These two pencil lines, the center fold, and the crease-and-snip form a rectangle. Trace around a round object such as a coffee mug to round the outside corners. Cut out the neck. An oval neck large enough to slip over a child's head would slide down its shoulders. For a child, make a round neck with a slit -- see "One way to make a square poncho for contingency use". Any neck hole suitable for a poncho will work for a poncho shirt. Make two patch pockets from the scraps. (Patch pockets are discussed in detail in "Pockets".) Cut them deep enough that the bias cut nips off one corner, then trim the adjacent corner to match. (The theme-park original turns the pockets 90ø to get a piece that is deep enough. This also turns the border on end to make a better design.) Making the pockets as large as possible requires you to turn them upside down, but if the print is directional, you can cut pockets from the back scraps and sew them to the front. Or you can use the inversion as an excuse for failing to match the print. (I just don't match it; the prints I use are so busy that it doesn't matter.) If the shirt is for a male, cut four pockets from the four scraps, using a shirt-pocket pattern. Sew two in the usual man's-shirt pocket positions, and the other two near the hem, directly below the first pair. Note that the scraps have one bias edge each, making them a convenient source of bias tape for finishing the neck and reinforcing the underarms. (If the shirt is canvas, make tape from a lighter fabric.) Assembly:  --------- Hem the neck and the three sides of each bottom flap. For a quick-and-dirty hem, miter the corners first, fold the hems to whatever width makes the miters meet neatly, topstitch by machine. If the fabric is too heavy to hem around a curve, face the neck with bias tape, or turn a narrow strip to the right side and cover the raw edge with rick-rack or another ornamental braid that curves easily. Sew the pockets to the front flap with their bottoms 2" from the bottom and their edges 2 1/2" from the edges. (See "patch pockets".) If your bottom flaps are longer than I told you to make them, sew the pockets farther from the hems too keep them at a convenient height. Sew 5/8" side seams, continuous with the sleeve seam. Press the seams open. Make three 3/8" snips (leave 1/4" unsnipped) into each allowance of each underarm curve, one on the crossgrain and two on the straight grain. (Make sure the snips _don't_ match, so that weak spots won't co-incide.) A seam ripper is handy for making these snips, as you can start the cut from where you want it to end. Fringe out the seam allowances of the underarm curves, finger-press open, and back-stitch by hand close to each side of the underarm seam. Turn under the allowances of the side seams and the sleeve seams and top-stitch to match the flap hems. (Both sides of the sleeve seams show.) Before top-stitching, press the corner of the sleeve hems so that you can see how to clip the ends of the seam allowances. Hem the sleeves. (There may be a selvage edge that does not need hemming.) REINFORCING THE UNDERARMS If the shirt is worth hand work, the tendency to tear out under the arms can be eliminated. You will need bias tape; there may be some left over from finishing the neck, or you can cut a strip from one of the bias scraps. If the shirt is canvas, look through your stash for tape made from pocketing twill or stout muslin -- canvas tape works around the neck, but it's lumpy and hard to sew under the arms. When turning under the seam allowances, turn them under a bit extra where they end on each side of the sharp curve, to make the raw ends fit under the tape. You will probably have to snip out a little excess fabric to keep them flat and thin. Press or baste folds on both sides of the tape, making it like commercial single-fold tape. Trim one end to a point, making cuts on the cross grain and straight grain that intersect in the middle of the tape. (You may wish to re-trim this angle to make it slightly obtuse.) Fold under these raw edges, basting the creases if the fabric is springy or the iron isn't hot. Trim any excess threads on the sharp curve, then baste the tape over the raw edges, putting the point well up on the straight part of the seam. Baste down the middle of the tape, checking frequently to make sure you are basting exactly in the seam. Ease the tape in as much as you conveniently can, because the edge of the tape needs to be longer than the middle. When you are back on finished seam, trim, fold, and baste another point. Now turn to the right side and backstitch on both sides of the seam from one end of the tape to the other. Stitch just barely outside the backstitching that holds the crease. These stitches transfer the strain under the arm from the weak seam to the strong tape. The crease- stitching serves as a backstop to keep the fabric from pulling out of the stress-transfer stitching, so you want the two rows close together. You will be forced into spaced backstitch by the multiple layers, but try to keep the stitches reasonably close together. When the second row is completed, push the needle through to the wrong side and backstitch all around the edges of the tape. Spaced backstitch is best for this. This round is mainly to keep the raw edges covered, but it also intercepts some of the stress before it gets to the seam. An underarm seam sewn in this manner does not tear out before the fabric has worn thin. But it does nothing to reduce armpit abrasion and sweat rot. September 2006: the moment of "Well, duh!" =========================================== When making poncho shirts, I've often thought that they really need a gusset under the arm, but couldn't figure out how to do it. Then a festival came up, and while modifying a pattern for a T-tunic imitation of an eighteenth- century "bedgown" into something that could actually be sewn and worn, I realized: for a gusset, all in the world you have to do is to shove a cup or a saucer into the angle formed by the intersection of the two angled lines and draw a smooth curve from one to the other. Much easier than connect-the-dotsing a sharply-curved stitching line, easier to sew, and it should stop pulling out in the armpit. Alas, my supply of poncho shirts should last me until the end of time, so I don't foresee ever trying this out. But the imitation bedgown is pretty much the same thing slashed down the front. August 2010: Insight not so insightful ======================================= So I the next time I made a poncho shirt I tried out the idea -- and realized that the absolute widest the angle under the arm can be is forty-five degrees. That means that the center of a circle tangent to both lines is going to be (gets headache trying to calculate distance in terms of diameter) way, way out there. But a bottle cap pushed into the angle wasn't too horribly far out, and though I'm stuck with the same old handwork and bias tape under the arm, I don't have to draw in the stitching line. For details, click on "Diary of a Poncho Shirt" in the hypertext files and page down until you see a picture of a coffee mug. EOF