It’s not very often my 15 year old son makes a sewing request. But when he saw this Abercrombie colorblock t-shirt he asked if I could make one like it. If you are interested in more about sewing for teen and tween boys, head over to Project Run & Play for their awesome Tween Scene event this week.
The Lemon Tee pattern from the Project Run & Play shop immediately jumped to mind. With one simple alteration this Abercrombie knockoff shirt could happen! If you remember from our review of the Lemon Tee pattern, there is an option for an asymmetrical shirt. You’d almost think Abercrombie copied the Lemon Tee! 😉 The Lemon Tee even has that delightful strip of fabric covering the back neckband.
I took the asymmetrical bottom part of the Lemon Tee and located the center along the top. Then I measured up 3 inches from the bottom (to allow for hem and to copy the inspiration shirt) and cut the asymmetrical pattern piece in two. All I had to do then was to cut my fabric with the correct pieces to match the Abercrombie colorblock shirt. As I was cutting the fabric, I made sure to add a 3/8″ seam allowance along the new cut line so when I sewed them together it would end up the same size as the original piece.
As it lucked out, I happened to have some red rayon jersey knit fabric in my stash. We’ve been sewing as much of our stashed fabric as we can for the past couple of years, so it’s not a bottomless pit anymore! The other colors actually were former shirts.
The blue shirt was one without side seams (still haven’t figured out how they make those in factories!) And I used the existing hem from the blue shirt, so no hemming required to make this! It happened to be the perfect shade of blue, so it underwent surgery to become a new shirt.
The white “fabric” came from one of these shirts. I’ve made more of those shirts than I can count for Mr. Skirt Fixation, and so there’s always some old ones laying around. I just went ahead and cut it along an existing side seam so I had one less seam to sew.
From there, I just sewed the white and blue fabrics together to make the asymmetrical bottom part. And then I constructed the rest of the shirt following the Lemon Tee pattern instructions.
Also lucky for my son, he still fits in the largest size (size 14) of the Lemon Tee pattern! Even through his broad shoulders, so no other adjustments were made to this pattern, and now I suspect he’ll be asking for more shirts like this.
And even though posing for blog photos was part of the agreement for me to sew it for him, I still had my work cut out for me. He crossed his arms to cover up the colorblock details, which is also probably why he has a smile on his face in so many of the photos!
Insisted on showing his muscles… 😉
And just wanted it to be over already! I’m just jesting. He’s such a hard working kid, and I’m delighted that he still will wear something his mom sewed for him. In fact, the other day he chose NOT to wear it so he didn’t get it ripped or torn or dirty with the activity he was doing. Success!
So what do you think? How’d we do on this Buy or DIY Abercrombie Colorblock T-shirt? Our cost was $0!!!
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Skirt Fixation 
the color blocks are not in the same location as the RTW shirt. Was that based on the amount of fabric you were working with?
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