If you follow the Sewcialist blog or #sewcialists on instgram, you can’t have missed that November is TNT month – that is, Tried-and-True patterns. Basically, a tribute month for all those patterns you’ve made so many times that you could practically make them in your sleep.
For me, like for a lot of people, my tried-and-true-est pattern has to be the Deer and Doe Plantain tee. So easy. So versatile. So free. What’s not to love? And although the original pattern is “just” a simple tee, it’s so easy to hack into other useful patterns – in fact, the more I thought about it, the more I was curious to count up just how many Plantains and Plantain-based garments I had:
3 actual Plantains: sewn according to the pattern. The first two, black and navy, were some of the earliest garments I blogged about. The striped one came soon after.
5 slightly modified Plantains: as my sewing skills grew, I started making small variations on the pattern. I added a cowl neck by simply widening the neckband piece. I tried a short-sleeved version. I narrowed the pattern at the hips to make it more fitted, and used it to cut down an over-sized sweater.
8 more modified Plantains: and then I realized this was a magical pattern – no matter how I hacked it, it always came out great. So I changed it up more and more. I tried a hip band, a wider sleeve cuff, a cowl neckline, a gathered neckline, a polo collar, a knotted front, a raglan sleeves redraft, and a dropped sleeve.
2 sleeveless Plantains: without sleeves it looks a bit like a muscle shirt, but with slight adjustments to sleeve (narrowing the shoulder seam, pictured) it looks like a proper tank top.
11 Plantain cardigans: and then I started making cardigans. I wrote a whole post about it, and since then I’ve made even more.
3 Plantain dresses: well, almost 3 dresses. One is finished (pictured, it’s the Plantain top and sleeves plus a half-circle skirt) and another in red velvet is almost finished. Another, which is literally just the Plantain extended 40 cm, is cut out but not sewn yet.
Were you keeping count? That’s 32 Plantain-based garments all together, and the majority of them are still in my everyday wardrobe. Can’t get much more tried-and-true than that!
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