Packing, + new Alabama Chanin project

We head out in less than 2 weeks!  Or at least, that is when my eldest's school and our rental agreement ends, we travel for a week up to Glasgow, then fly to Chicago via Reykjavik, visit family for a few days and THEN drive home 11 hours to our house, which hopefully will have been vacated by our renter.

Everything we took to England fit into 2 medium suitcases, 2 roller bags and a bunch of backpacks, and we haven't bought TOO much stuff.  But there is still some work to be done in culling out school-based paper goods and craft items that are just not worth hauling halfway across the planet for 2 weeks.

Despite that, I am starting one more project, in part because my fingers are kind of itching to do more embroidery-style work.  This time I wanted to do one with less seaming, so that I could try out one of the new designs that is based on a lace motif.  I'm attempting a high-necked, fairly close fitting tank.

I also wanted to try a different approach to fitting, one that hasn't worked out exactly as I'd hoped but that still shows promise.  Rather than cutting apart a t-shirt completely and starting from scratch, I wanted to try using the neckline and shoulder seams, and perhaps the hem.  So, this is what I started with:

 I bought two Men's X-large shirts, same brand, in a charcoal and putty color.  That wasn't entirely intentional, Amazon.com lied a bit about the colors.  Okay, a LOT.  They were both supposed to be shades of gray.  I think it'll be fine, though.

So far, I've pinned the top shirt (charcoal) on myself, cut off the sides and arms, pinned again, drew lines, basted, drew new lines, based a second time and then cut again.  Then I laid the cut top over the uncut one and cut the lower layer, leaving a little bit of wiggle room at the sides.   Because it's a knit, and because the original tops seemed to be a bit off-grain (!) things are not perfectly symmetric.  However, the fact that I was able to pin the whole thing together on my body makes me fairly confident that it fits okay.  The main uncertainty is the armholes, as they will fit completely differently once they are bound.

Progress:

You can see that I also picked off the neck ribbing from the under-layer to reduce bulk.  It'll just be slip stitched around to the top piece when I put the two together before starting embroidery.

Next stop: stenciling!  I've already cut my stencil out of a piece of letter-sized transparency film.  It's small, but I'm doing the stenciling with a sponge and my piece isn't too big.  If I buy an airbrush I'll need to move up to larger stencils.  I bought some silver fabric paint this time, but in my test the silver washed out!  That's okay - the look I'm going for will not rely heavily on the paint remaining - it's mostly just used to help outline the motifs.