Rainbow Flashback tee for Hugo

Like many of your kiddos, mine are currently schooling from home. For now I’ll refrain from any general commentary on how I feel about the current national situation and/or the utter incompetence that has brought us to a virtual school year except to say that I’ve had to largely give up work and sewing because of virtual schooling, and it’s frustrating. Of course I’m grateful that I can spend more time with my children at home on the daily. But you can’t just stop working when you own a small business — the work and emails always pile up, even when you put some projects on hold. It also hasn’t been easy for my kids to adapt to this much time on a screen and I’m not sure I want them to, as it’s soul-sucking, boring, and lonely. As youngest, Hugo has had the toughest time adapting (he’s in 1st grade) and it’s been a process, to say the least, just to get through a day without tears or meltdowns. I could say more on this topic, but for now I think I’ve provided some context into my current situation and why it felt like a small bit of victory just to get this rainbow t-shirt made for Hugo a couple weeks ago.

I used my Flashback Tee pattern, which is one of my oldest yet most-used patterns. I’ve sewn tees in every size, added skirts, ruffle sleeves, short-sleeves, and created A-line dresses (you can get a taste for this on the Flashback page - look for the tutorials). It’s a versatile pattern and one I can always count on my kiddos to wear.

I love that I didn’t have to purchase any new fabric to make this tee. I used a conference tee of Mr Rae’s that he had thrown in the donate bin for the main shirt, then took colored knit scraps from other projects to make the stripes at the top of the sleeve (which had the added benefit of covering up a portion of the old tee’s logo that I couldn’t quite cut around that ended up at the top of one of the sleeves). I cut the strips 1.25” wide, overlapped them starting at the top, and pinned and stitched them in place with a zig zag stitch. The last strip is 1” wide since it wasn’t overlapped.

Here’s a pic before I added the second sleeve:

The other lovely thing about upcycling another tee is LA LA LA NO HEMMING. If you cut the sleeves and main part of the shirt so that the edge of the old tee lines up with the “finished hem” line on the pattern piece, this works perfectly, a trick I do when sewing Parsley pants as well (tutorial here).

When I created this pattern, Elliot — who is now 13 — was a year younger than Hugo is now. So how about a few flashback pics for old time’s sake?

You can find the Flashback Tee pattern in two size ranges (1-5 y, and 6-14 y) in my shop, or visit the Flashback page to see posts and tutorials featuring this pattern.