Present Joys

I’ve been out of school for just over a week now—and I’m proud to say I’ve been busy with my time this past week. Some background information: last year at this time, I’d only made about five shirts and my production skills were severely lacking. So all last summer, I made one shirt every week (and I wrote about it online), in an effort to improve both my technical skill and the accuracy of my patterns. I think I did both! This past saturday was my first time making a shirt since last august. Surprisingly, I was able to work much faster than I had last summer. And construction is easier! Practice makes perfect. I made three shirts this week:

The first shirt is a tangerine chambray. (I made a very similar shirt exactly a year ago… I love this sort of fabric.) I used my pattern from june 2011, which is slightly loose-fitting. I wanted to make a 1940s-style shirt: blousy, with a spearpoint collar and loose-fitting sleeves. I think I overdid the spearpoint thing—the collar points are 4.5″ long! This is the kind of collar that will look great with a tie and a collar pin, but it’s just too big by itself. In another attempt to give this shirt a golden-era feel, I gathered the sleeves into the cuffs instead of using pleats as is usually done. The gathers mean the sleeve’s fullness is evenly-distributed around the cuff, instead of being all lumped near the sleeve placket. It’s a subtle effect but it’s pretty neat-looking. I will probably continue to use this technique.

The second shirt is an awesome feather print from Sew to Speak. The fabric isn’t really designed for garment use, so it feels a little stiff. I’m hoping it will soften up after launderings. I loved this fabric as soon as I saw it, and I’d been hoping to make a shirt out of it for months now. This is the first short-sleeved shirt I’ve ever made; I figured the wild fabric would work better in short-sleeved form. In the end, I think making this short-sleeved just makes it look like a Hawaiian shirt (which was not my intention). I’ve just got to be very careful to keep it tucked in. Regardless, I’m happy with it. I still love the print. And the sleeves are hemmed with 3″ of extra fabric so I can roll up the sleeves without the wrong side showing. It’s fun.

The third shirt was cut from my july 2011 pattern, which is slimmer. The fabric is a wild, lightweight cotton twill I bought at Jo-Ann Fabrics last fall. It looks really cool close-up, but unfortunately, from far away, it looks a lot like puke. I’d originally planned to make this shirt with french cuffs and a detachable collar band. But then I realized that I really don’t like wearing french cuffs, so I didn’t make them. In hindsight, I’m glad, because big, showy cuffs would have only made this shirt even sketchier. It fits correctly, at least!

I’m not going to set a weekly goal for myself like I did last summer. I’m quite happy with my skills and I’m looking forward to trying some new techniques. For the near future, I’m going to take a break from shirts altogether and work on my coatmaking skills. Stay tuned, tumblr!