Getting shirty …

Only six months late, but I have finally made an anniversary present  …

Jimmy has been my better half for many years now. I met him at art college where he wore the graphic design student uniform – a Smiths t-shirt with turned up Levis, an old man’s wool cardi and DMs. He liked my etchings and stripy bretons and I liked his taste in music, design work and bottom. Nothing’s changed.

Anyway, nostalgia aside, to celebrate 22 (and a half) years together I made him a shirt, yes, another one (see the first one here) and I think it’s a success (almost) …

I wanted to make Jimmy a smarter shirt, this time with a dress collar rather than the camp collar of the Negroni and long sleeves too. I used the McCall’s 6044  but also used Colette’s Negroni for the sleeve placket pattern (which is much nicer) and to remind myself how to do flat felled seams. The blue book in the photo is a gem (McCall’s Sewing in Colour) from 1963 and you must seek it out as it’s blooming handy to look up forgotten techniques!

Ta-dah!

The fabric is an organic cotton crossweave from Ray Stitch and is a dream to sew after all my silly synthetic makes of late. The construction went well, using both patterns was straightforward but somehow, little things kept going wrong. The automatic button hole option on my machine seems to be a bit unreliable these days (no idea why) it tends to do only one side of a button hole then crazily continues stitching on the same spot instead of moving over to finish the other side. Just as I’m about to give up, it performs and produces a perfect one! Perhaps someone could point out the obvious to me?

The double row stitching on the pockets is done by eye, but then I remembered the never used before, twin needle hiding in my sewing box. It is so easy to use and gives such satisfyingly neat results, I love it so much that I used it virtually everywhere (you can see the much neater stitches on the yoke) …

All in all, I’m very happy with this shirt. Despite two broken needles (one on the overlocker), not having quite enough buttons, much unpicking (pre twin needle), the fact that it has a tiny hem due to my unfortunate mis-measuring, the sleeves being too long (urgh!) and the many dodgy unfinished button holes before the perfect ones, I like it a lot! Oh, and it does match at the front (I swear), it’s just the silly photo!

He likes it a lot too! Go on, smile for the camera …

that’s more like it, happy anniversary.

xx