Week One of tanks

No, silly, not the big ones with stuff that goes bang on top!  Little sleeveless ones!!!
Using my self-developed pattern, I cut out five from remnants of the pants linens and one very cheerful lightweight cotton plaid (!), and have been plonking along on them since the weekend.  Ten minutes one morning here, an hour of an evening there.... just pecking away at the task, slowly but surely.  Here's the first I actually finished, in a very fine black/white stripe.  The fabric is a $5 find from the Fabric Flea Market that sufficed for both trousers and top. By the feel of it, it's a cotton-linen blend.

Of the five of them, three have bias-cut fronts, two of them with CF seam; a couple have a CB seam as well.  At this point, I think all, like the one here, will have flat felled seams, bound neck & armscyes (sp?), plus vented sides.  There's a reason for all the compulsive over-finishing, and it's that (so I hear) the laundry service over there is very harsh on clothes.  I'd rather put in a little effort up front than find my work falling apart in week 3 of the adventure.  Right?  of course right. 

 I did make an effort to make the bindings as narrow as possible, and this one isn't bad (I've done worse).  The trick is to use a very short stitch and then trim the excess to a scant 1/8 inch (2.5 mm?).  The side darts could come up 1 cm higher or so, I think, and the neckline might drop a smidgen in some of the others.  But overall - especially with a blouse or jacket on top - eminently wearable!

ETA:  all my tops are simple pull-ons.  The back neckline is scooped out about 2 cm (~1") below the neck bump, so there's plenty of room for my head.  There's a little shaping to the side seam as well, but I've kept the CF & CB seams - when they're present - straight.  

I do all of these in the flat:  sew both bust darts, flat fell one shoulder seam, attach neckline binding, flat fell other shoulder seam (catching the open binding in the seam - there's a bit of tricky little trimming that always has to happen here), turn over & stitch-in-the-ditch the neck binding, attach both armscye bindings, flat fell both side seams (pressing the vent SA's at the same time),  finish armscye bindings, press hems, sew all around hems and vents in one go, hide all thread ends, press it all one last time, toss on the done pile, repeat.  ;)