lemons into lemonade, or new life for an old shirt

i had this shirt that i really liked. it wasn't the world's greatest shirt - it was an h&m shirt i got at a swap, actually - but the fit was pretty good, the collar was just right, and i loved the sleeves and cuffs.

then it went into the laundry with something red.

so, i tore it apart at the seams, and used it to make a pattern.

pretty straightforward, really. i just pinned it directly to the fabric and used it as a pattern. i also took the opportunity to drop the dart an inch or so, by slashing the "pattern" and spacing it out. i did the same to the back, for consistency.

it took some futzing, because one of the fabrics i was cutting was exceedlingly narrow - i think it shrank more than the others during the prewash phase. which, of course, makes me extra-glad i always prewash stuff that will go in the laundry, and dry it on the "hot as hell" setting, so if it wanted to do any shrinking, hopefully it will have gotten that out of its system before the cutting & sewing begins.

and can i say how much i love my scissors, which cut easily through 8 layers of fabric? after the misery of figuring out how to lay out the pattern pieces, it's nice to just cut once and have four shirts ready to sew, as opposed to going through the whole laying out and cutting process four times. it still took most of the afternoon.

go scissors.

i actually have more fabric somewhere that was bought with shirt-making in mind, but couldn't find it in the stash of doom! sigh.

plan is to make a proper pattern out of the pieces before i sew them all up. pretty sure i have enough "random" fabric (i.e. weird polyester broadcloth hand-me-down stuff from an older relative who down-sized) to make it out of fabric, which is so much nicer for laying out and cutting. then, i can make as many of "the perfect shirt" as i want.

here's a slightly better look at the fabrics: the stripe is one that's been in the stash for literally years, and the prints i bought on sale last month at len's mill.

the "glasses" is my favourite, but also the one that shrunk the most. and the one that required careful pattern-matching. hope i did ok.