1.16.2009

A Tale of Two Shirts

In an obvious pilfering of Summerset's post about the many people in her life who have encouraged and supported her hobbies, I would also like to recognize the most special person in mine who has been nothing but supportive of me as I continue on my creative journey. My fiance taught me that creativity can be applied to anything you do, whether it be sewing, cooking, or even solving really intense physics problems. From his ever encouragement to ignore time, ignore dinner, ignore pressures, I have learned how to slow down and enjoy the process in almost every aspect of my life. Since, I have no plaque or obelisk to commemorate this recognition, I made him some shirts!

twoshirts

Pattern: The awesome-ness of David Page Coffin's book Shirtmaking for the new shirtmaker can not be emphasized enough. From it I learned how to draft my own pattern, how to construct the button band, the sleeve plackets and the collar.

The first shirt I made was the short-sleeve shirt on the right. The fabric was purchased from the cotton section of Fabric Mart a while back. The shirt was actually intended to be long sleeve but 2 yards of fabric just didn't cut it. This shirt has been dubbed the 'graph paper' shirt.

front back

The second shirt was made after I widened the front by 2" to allow for a little more movement. The fabric is from Gorgeous Fabrics. It is a pink plaid cotton shirting and I doubly love this shirting. Want to know why? Because, you can wash this shirt through the normal wash/dry cycle and it just needs a couple of pats out of the dryer and the shirt looks as if it had already been ironed, now that is an ironing job I can commit to. The shirt won't be crisp, but that agrees with the flavor of the shirt. The fabric is thin compared to the 'graph paper' shirt which allows for lots of layering which is good for our area's weather.

full-cropbackrollup-crop

I used fabric interfacing on the 'graph paper' shirt and iron-on interfacing for the pink shirt. I like using the fabric interfacing but for some reason I think the iron-on interfacing makes a more manageable collar. Both shirts use a double yoke and as David Page Coffin implores I used a rolled hem foot for the hem and a hemmer foot to do the side seams.

One more picture of the details:

sleeveplacket buttontab

What more can you ask for? Both shirts fit, albeit one better than the other, and he supports my hobbies to the point where a guy with primarily blue, and all shades of blue, in his wardrobe is now walking around town in a pink shirt.

12 comments:

Summerset said...

Great shirts! I really, really love the long sleeved one with all the bias details! The placket, cuff and yoke are perfect on the bias. I use double yokes, too. I find that fusible *woven* interfacing is better than the nonwoven stuff if you're going to use a fusible. I didn't like the Pellon ShirtTailor, but liked the last Pellon woven fusible I bought.

Gorgeous Things said...

Love, love LOVE the bias placket. And it's a blue on pink shirt. Not a pink-pink shirt. ;-)

Dana said...

Love the shirts, and I must agree that certainly is not a pink shirt!

Berry said...

Amazing details! You're talented and lucky he supports you. And he is lucky you custom-make him these beautiful shirts even when a bit pinkish.

Christina said...

Very very nice shirts, they look just so casual-cool.

Tany said...

The shirts look awesome and very well made!

Leslie said...

Wow, you drafted your own pattern too! Very very nice. DPC's book is fabulous, even for a beginning shirtmaker.

soknitpicky said...

What a great love story :-)

Meg said...

Great shirts and photos. I'll have to look for DPC's book at the FIT bookstore.

Pam Erny said...

As a Shirtmaker by profession....my hat's off to you for making 2 fabulous shirts!

Feel free to drop by my Shirtmaking Studio and Sewing Site for some free Shirtmaking tutorials (lots of tips for making collar points crisp and clean), and free originally designed pocket patterns. This is not advertising ;) just sharing...nothing for sale there.

Pam, from ~Off The Cuff Style~

Anonymous said...

holy cow! those are fantastic! lucky man.

BCN - UNIQUE designer patterns said...

Lulu .- fabulous shirts. I love this type of tissue. here in spain is called "vichy" .. greetings, Paco