Stellan Tee 2.0

A little bit ago I was perusing French Navy’s pattern catalog when I came across the pattern for the “Stellan Tee 2.0.” This piqued my interest because the Stellan Tee was one of the first (maybe THE first??) t-shirt patterns I ever sewed up. I liked the original pattern pretty well, but I was interested in testing out the updates they made.

Heaven knows I don’t need any more boxy tee patterns, but for the low price of $2.25 I felt I needed to do the right thing and try it out. Because how else would I know which one is the best one?

Also I need to give credit where credit is due and say that, to date, French Navy has never done me wrong with their t-shirt patterns. I’ve made the original Stellan several times and the Tarifa Tee is one of my favorites. Getting another one of their t-shirt patterns for only a couple dollars was a quick and obvious yes!

Here’s an example of one of my versions of the original Stellan pattern, so you can see how the patterns differ. The original Stellan is FREE and has excellent instructions that are very beginner friendly. Here I made the size D in a white cotton jersey (that happened to be the perfect t-shirt fabric, but I can’t for the life of me remember where I bought it!).

You can see in these pictures that the original Stellan has some mild waist shaping, a curved hem and boxy cuffed sleeves.

For the Stellan 2.0 they made the shape boxier (no waist shaping), straightened the hem, and shortened the sleeves (while removing the cuff).

The changes are definite improvements, in my opinion!

I stuck with a size D for my Stellan 2.0 and I made the bold choice of using some favorite fabric, despite this being my first time making the pattern. This is something that is definitely frowned upon (make a muslin before using your fashion fabric is the rule of thumb) but I do it pretty often and-to be truthful-occasionally regret it. But I’ve found boxy tees are pretty easy to tweak into something wearable, so I wasn’t very worried about using up a good fabric.

The fabric is the slub jersey cotton from ISEE fabrics (I’ve talked about it before and I absolutely LOVE it). It is not the stretchiest fabric, so it doesn’t work for every project, but it works very well for these boxy tees.

Originally, I was going to make it all one color, the light green (I don’t know if it comes across in the pictures but it is appropriately named “honeydew”) and even had the matching ribbing to go with it. But I compared it to some leftover scraps from my Jesse Tee dress in “Sea” and felt like the combo was just too good to pass up. I love a color blocked tee and have tried it before, but I ended up liking the execution much better with this version.

I tried to use my best sewing skills and even topstitched around seams using matching colors, like on some RTW shirts. It’s subtle, but I like how it turned out.

I made an absolutely terrible choice to unpick my neckband. The pattern comes with two different neckband pieces-one to be used with self fabric (i.e. whatever you’re using for the body of the tee) and one to be used with rib knit, since the stretch percentage between those two fabrics can be vastly different. Even though I used the pattern piece for the rib knit, I still felt like the neckband wasn’t fitting quite snug enough.

My first go around with it had me worried that the tension of the band wasn’t tight enough. I have had several instances of doubting a neckband, and every time I don’t listen to my gut, I end up regretting it. So I decided to unpick it, which wouldn’t have been too big of a deal except that I had already serged the seam. I’m not kidding when I say that unpicking that one seam around the neck took me over two hours! I finally got it unpicked but I was definitely regretting my choice by the end!

I recut a fresh neckband, this time about two inches shorter, and sewed that one. It’s hard to determine whether it made a very big difference because all the unpicking made me rage forget what the first attempt even looked like, but I will say the second attempt was successful. It looks good, doesn’t pucker and hasn’t gotten warped in the wash, so I’ll just optimistically believe the work was worth it.

Aside from that, the sewing was easy and straightforward. The instructions, when I read them as a beginner sewist for the original Stellan, were excellent, and I’m just assuming they were also very good here for the 2.0.

And the finished top is….one of my favorites! I’m always a fan of this fabric but the pattern itself is a total success. It is very similar to the Jesse Tee pattern (which is free, compared to the $3.00 cost of the Stellan 2.0), but I always end up having to tweak the Jesse by removing volume, especially from the sleeves. The Stellan 2.0 went directly from fit check stage to hemming because absolutely nothing needed to be adjusted. I will absolutely be making more versions of this pattern!

Pattern: Stellan Tee 2.0
Size: D
Adjustments: 3/8 inch forward shoulder adjustment
Fabric: slub cotton jersey + matching rib knit from ISEE fabrics in “Honeydew” and “Sea”
Cost: pattern (on sale) $2.25; fabric purchased using gift card
Would I make this pattern again?: Definitely!