After looking at a bunch of woven tee patterns, I realize I already had one that I like in my stash--the River from Megan Nielsen. I was actually a tester for this pattern, approximately 100 years ago, so I have made the top in both a knit and woven. The knit one never made it to the blog--I wore it a ton but it was still in testing when I spilled on it and stained it. RIP white knit River tee! The woven one you can read about here. For this third one, I pulled a piece of rayon/linen from my stash, left over from this dress. The tee version requires 1 1/4" of 60" fabric, but I squeezed this out of under a yard by cutting the back piece in two and shortening the sleeve pattern piece--the short sleeve pattern pieces are really long as drafted so that you can cuff them.
The other change I made is to draft a facing for the neckline finish instead of using the bias bound finish. It is hard to get that point in the V neckline sewn crisply, and with a v-neck there is a lot of bias cut edge that is prone to stretch out if not properly stabilized, so I think a facing is a bit easier to deal with. In this case, a topstitched facing is no more casual than the original bias finish, so it doesn't much affect the dressiness of the top, and is easier to sew.
The next tweak I'd like to make is to put a little dart in the top of the sleeve to allow the sleeve to lay better from the neckline to the em. Currently it sticks out, and I think I should be able to add a dart somewhere to smooth it over the shoulder (like in many other raglan pattterns). You can see in the photo the fold in the sleeve that I could rotate into the neckline... I haven't quite figured out this alteration yet, though, so you may or may not see it on my next River!
xoxo,
allie
ps: i have a few more piece in my stash that may turn into rivers as well--it's such a simple pattern to knock out!
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