Filmore West Top

I found this T-shirt with the "Filmore West " name on the back, and I assume what was a fairly Hippy-esque design on the front but was so faded I wasn't sure. My first thought was, could this T-shirt actually have survived in someones attic since the 60s-70s? Probably not, but the idea was intriguing. Anyway, when I saw it, hanging in the forlorn ranks of other cast off shirts at the Goodwill, I had a flashback to my own Hippy days—painted clothes, painted face, lots of beads, freakout dances with giant pulsing blobs projected on the walls—you know, all the fun stuff. At the time, I never made it to San Francisco or the Filmore where all the hot bands played, and by the time I graduated from High School it was being touted that the age of the Flower Child was already dead. But still, I found this silly T-shirt that brought back a lot of silly, and I'll be honest also scary, memories. For $2.00 I bought it, with no clue what I was going to do with it.

Then, not long ago, I came across another Goodwill shirt with a swirly design that I liked. It was also only about $2.99, so I bought that one. 

Add to this progression the fact that I recently caved and started a Pinterest page, with lots of boards full of ideas, and we get to this current project, which is a bit different from the things I have done so far.

Here are the two shirts I am using. First decision I made was to ignore the design on the front of the Filmore shirt and make the back of the shirt the front. I have already cut the sleeves off the Filmore shirt.

I put the Filmore shirt on Inara (my dress form) and started playing around with draping, which I had never done before. At one point I basted in tucks around the waist and put pleats across the shoulder seams, but when I tried it on, I didn't like the way the shirt hung and knew if I kept it that way, I would never wear it. So, I ripped out all the basting and tried just tying the shoulder seems to get the drape. That worked a lot better. With that idea in mind, after cutting the neckline a bit lower, I cut binding from the patterned shirt and sewed that to the neck and armholes of the Filmore shirt.  Instead of using embroidery thread to sew on the binding, I used doubled button/craft thread, which I actually liked working with better than the embroidery thread. Unfortunately, it comes in a limited choice of colors. I used the button thread because it's not as bulky, and I didn't want the stitching to obliterate or distract from the pattern on the shirt. As it turned out, from only a short distance, the thread disappears.

The front of the shirt was going to need some sort of design, but I didn't have anything that really look "Hippy" and in any case, I didn't want to go that way. I wanted something more urban, rock, or punk rather than Hippy or "crafty." I wanted edgy. Which made me remember the stencil of a rose I also bought at the Goodwill, for only a dollar.

On one of the cutoff sleeves I stenciled the rose, in black. The rose will be cut out in a rectangle (you can just see the lines drawn with soap on the material), and then bordered with the patterned shirt material. The whole piece will be appliqued onto the front of the Filmore shirt.

After I got all the binding sewn on, I tied up the shoulder seams with a piece of cord I found in my stash of stuff, in a color that worked, and tried the shirt on again. I liked it, and knew the applique of the rose would work great. While I was still standing in front of the mirror, I hiked up the sides in preparation for taking the shirt off, and stopped. I really liked the way the shirt draped when I pulled up the sides just a bit. That will be the last thing I do to finished the top. This is meant to be layered over other shirts, as the armholes are a bit big and would show my bra if I wore it alone. Which is fine, because I originally wanted it to be something I could layer.

So, that's the Filmore West Top—so far. This should go together pretty fast, and since the weather is rainy and cold, I'll have lots of time to work on it.