I've been feeling an itch for some new work shirts in my life for a while too, so it was good to finally make some. In fact, I've been planning this for so long, the fabrics were all pulled from stash and I basically had buttons already available for the most part. I made 2 desgns and will talk about each in turn.
Tailored shirts: Charles Tyrwhitt RTW Copy
I've had a crisp, white tailored shirt from Charles Tywhitt since my first attempts at joining the labour market. I thought it was the most beautiful and elegant item of officewear imagineable. Other people probably didn't think so.Back in 2015 when I was on a RTW-copying binge I took this shirt from my wardrobe, covered it in Frixion pen and tried to take a pattern. All things considered, it went pretty well but the shirt stayed stuffed in a bag for 12 months and the pattern didn't progress beyond rough drafts.
I finally brought the shirt back in to service but it was no longer the apple of my eye. The fit is not as exquisite as I would like, it's cut incredibly high into my armpits and struggles to remain tucked in if my trousers are below my natural waist.
But still I had the undeveloped pattern. This was the last project to clear from my crazy 2015 backlog and I had to see it through. I trued the pattern as much as possible and sewed it up. Now I have a new bold pink shirt and a new ubiquitous blue stripe one.
The pink fabric was a gift many moons ago. It came from Truro Fabrics or Stone Fabrics, I can't remember which. The interfacing was from William Gee. This was my first time using their K10 product and it's not quite what I'm used to. I need to spend a bit more time working with it to get best results.
So let's talk about construction. Despite trueing this as much as possible, there were still a few tricky bits where it wasn't perfect. Because I wasn't prepared to iterate this until it was right, I decided I was happy to live with it. This gave me some problems during construction, but I tried to make it work so the final thing would look okay. For example, the collar stand and collar weren't quite symmetrical and it's very easy to be bothered by the pink stripes if they don't look even. It's less of an issue on the blue shirt, so that one has fewer "corrections".
One detail I love is the bias binding on the sleeve slit. This is a detail I copied from the original and it's so fun! It looks like a candy stripe! Those of you who know me will know that I always roll up my shirt sleeves, so why even bother adding proper cuffs?? I have no idea. Maybe that bit just had to be right.
So these are in heavy rotation now. It's an uncontroversial design and it's basically passing in the office without comment.
McCall's 7360: Grandad Collars Galore
I've fallen out of love with the Wiksten Tova and have been searching for a replacement grandad/mandarin collar shirt. I think I was also keen during 2018 to push the Moira Skirt into circulation, and I thought it would work well with grandad collar shirts. The McCall's pattern fits the bill and popped up at just the right time.It has been a while since my last tissue pattern. The size chart indicated an 8 at the bust, and 12 at the hips, but after checking the finished garment measurements I made a straight 6.
I like the pattern generally but it has a couple of weird details that I don't like. Firstly the bust darts are a bit too high, but the design is so loose and I'm so flat chested that it doesn't really matter. The shoulder seams sit slightly forwards, typical of shirts with yokes, but they sit quite close to my natural shoulder line, so I wonder if it's just pulling backwards. If I make this again, I may move the darts down a bit so it looks correct.
The main thing that bugs me is the two-piece full length sleeve. It looks like the only reason why this sleeve is in two pieces is to avoid cutting a slit for the cuff. You just leave a gap in the seam! The instructions say to to use the leftover seam allowance from this area to make a tiny hem. I guess this would work but it feels a bit funny to add a whole seam there just to provide some seam allowance to finish. You know I'm not very good at following the instructions so I used bias binding on the sleeve slits, like on the tailored shirts.
As always there was a lot of hand sewing in the instructions so I tried to find a majority machine finish too.
The fabric is linen for both shirts. I really lik the rumply-linen look for this style. It helps to mitigate some of the visual impact of a loose style on someone with my frame. I enjoy sewing with linen but rarely like the finished project as soon as it's done. Linen projects always look better after their first wash, so it's important to be patient during those first few wears.
The striped linen is pretty heavy and comes from Momo during my Tokyo shopping trip. It always reminded me of baseball, but I can't remember the original plan for it. The plain linen, I don't remember. It has been in my stash for a while. Perhas it came from Goldhawk Road, maybe around the same time as the blue stripes for the tailored shirt above. Both of them are neutral so I can get away with wearing them with almost anything.
The buttons are a bit more "happy go lucky" than the buttons for the tailored shirts. I really didn't want to go out and find new ones for these shirts so I tried a few from the stash. I had enough little pink ones for the centre front bit of the plain shirt, but not enough for the cuffs. I used some spare hammer-in snaps, but I doubt anyone will notice. The beep blue buttons are a lot heavier, leftover from the fluffy Newcastle. They tread a very fine line between 'tailor's window chic' and clown-ly. As always, if you wear it with confidence it won't matter.
So that's it for 4 new shirts. They're in rotation and I expect they'll see me through for quite a while.
Bye
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