I have been saying for quite a while that I wanted to make something for my hubby (not counting the Totoro Onesie) he loves shirts with nice patterened fabric and when we were in Nottingham in May we picked up some floral cotton, it's soft and has a nice drape to it. He announced that he'd like a shirt made up in it, and as it was only £2 per meter we bought 3m.I traced off a pattern from one of his favourite shirts, I didn't use a pattern as the only ones I had were in Burdastyle magazine and were not in his size. To trace the pattern I simply ironed the shirt, they lay thin tissue over it and traced over the seam lines with a biro, this was easy to do as there is very little ease on the sleeves in a mans shirt. I do need to make slight alterations to the pattern, but the fit was generally good. I think i'll increase the collar and collar stand size next time.
I used Grainline Archer's sewalong as I haven't made a shirt before and her instructions are awesome. the only thing I did differently was to make a different shirt placket. I taught myself how to do these, by deconstructing a shirt cuff many years ago, before I'd really got into sewing. As I used to teach Design technology I'd always advocated using disassembly to help understand how things were made. Now I put it to good use when I want to know how to sew something.
