Monday 4 June 2012

Greetings!

Hello blogosphere!

For the first project on this blog, I decided to take a leaf from the book of loud shirts and attempt the Amy Butler Liverpool. 

For those unfamiliar with the  pattern, it's a shirt/tunic with a choice of sleeve and hem lengths. There are a total of eight darts, the centre back has a french seam, and you can include/omit waist ties.

I made an XS in tunic length, 3/4 length sleeves with the ties. 


The project covers two of my major sewing resolutions: move away from knit fabrics and unfitted garments. Although they're comfy, it's time to learn something new!

So to start of this adventure into fit, I made the vertical darts bigger and raised the bust darts by about 1/2 an inch. There was also a petite adjustment, making the distance between the bust and the waist smaller. 

The shirt fits pretty well through the bust, waist and hips but there is still excess fabric in the upper chest and across the shoulders. This could be due to any number of different things, and I'd welcome some advice on the matter.

It also looks like the hem is not completely level. It may be a trick of the camera's position, but I'll have to look in to making the back a bit longer next time.


The sleeves also seem to be a bit too loose around the biceps, but I'm super pleased the cuffs fit without any alterations.


The other problem is an odd gaping between the bust and waist buttons. Normally this seems to happen in the bust in ladies shirts. I'm wondering if this is due to button/buttonhole placement being slightly off? It could be fixed with an invisible button in between, we'll have to see how things go on that front.

Overall, I'm pleased with my first shirt, there were a lot of new techniques to practice here, and I took a lot of extra time making sure any visible stitches looked good and were consistent. Pretty good result!



Fabric: quilter's cotton, bad choice for a summer shirt. 
Techniques practiced: buttonholes, fitting, french seams, mock french seams.
Interesting arty-farty link of the day: Umberto Eco talking about lists