I love the kids discoverer tee. Its such a great, simple pattern with great colour blocking. It’s one of my go to patterns when making the kids basics.
Recently, I’ve been adding a little contrast knit binding at the front colour blocking, just to give the pattern a little something-something and I really think it jazzes it up a little. The best thing is, its really EASY to do! In this blog, I’ll walk you through all the steps you need to take to add your own contrast binding. If you haven’t already, grab the pattern here:
Let’s get started!
The first thing you need to do is cut out all your pattern pieces as per instructed in the pattern. You should have the front top piece, back top piece, 2 bodice pieces (front and back), sleeves, neckband and the optional cuff and waistband pieces if thats what you are doing, as shown below. (I chose not to do those pieces and will hem my sleeves and tee so they are not pictured)
Once you have cut those pieces, you are going to take one of the bodice pieces and measure how wide it is across the top. I’m making the 2T and its about 12 inches from side to side.
You are now going to cut a piece of knit fabric that is going to be your binding. You want this to be about an inch longer than what you measured the top of your bodice piece to be anything from a 1-2 inches in width. For this tee I cut mine 2 inches wide, but I think I actually prefer the original knit binding I did on the black and grey tee which I’m pretty sure was only 1 inch wide. You just need to take into account that you are going to loose about 1/4 of an inch or more when sewing it on.
I used a clear quilting ruler to cut mine which made it really easy to mark out the 2 inches width and the length I wanted of 13 inches long.
Once you’ve cut your knit binding piece, fold it in half, wrong sides together and give it a press if you like. Then you are going to pin/clip it along the top of the bodice piece, raw edges together. It should look like the image below.
Baste the binding piece to the bodice piece with a long straight stitch on your sewing machine.
Now lay your top front piece on top of the bodice and knit binding piece, aligning the raw edges so the knit binding piece is sandwiched between the bodice and the top front bodice piece. The edges of the binding will stick out at the sides but thats ok, we’ll trim them after. Pin/clip in place and serge them together.
Flip the front bodice piece up and press the seam toward the top. Top stitch the seam in place using your preferred top stitching method. I have used a cover-stitch but a stretch stitch or twin needle on a normal machine will look nice as well.
Trim the sides to neaten up your front bodice piece.
Tadah! You can now continue with the instructions as indicated in the pattern.
As I mentioned above, have a try with different widths until you get the width of knit binding you are happy with. I think adding the binding gives this tee such a snazzy look and helps give it a little extra something!
Thanks for reading, I really hope it helped you add your own knit binding to your kids discoverer tee. Tag me on instagram with your makes, I’d love to see them! @sewandtellau
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