This shirt was made from the Summer shirt pattern in Downtown DIY Sewing by Alice Chadwick. I bought the book on sale because I liked the dress on the cover (which looks nothing like the photo of it on a person inside the book). I have several critiques of this book. First of which is that I think the instructions are poorly written and particularly confusing if you are a beginner and have no solid previous knowledge of how a garment comes together. And some of the instructions are just bad and could be made better very simply. For example the cuff piece on the sleeve is just a band folded in half lengthwise. The directions have you sew this folded piece directly to the right side of the sleeve and leave all the seam allowance hanging out. What?? Sew one edge to the right side of the sleeve and press the other raw edge under and stitch in the ditch. Also the seam allowance is 3/8 in or 1cm. That is tiny! Way too tiny to even comfortably finish properly. I bound the seams with seam binding as it seemed to be the easiest thing to do with out suffering severe burns on my hands. All in all this is my new favorite shirt and I do have plans to make one or two more despite the issues that I have with the book.
1 1/4 yd Floral Print Cotton, Vogue Fabrics, Remnant room, $4-5 total
Vintage buttons from Broadway Antique Mart
This is how I like to wear it. I have become very fond of wide belts worn at the waist.
And this is the muslin from it. I made it into a work shirt/messy shirt. it reminds of a french painters smock for some reason. You can see how it is wider at the bottom where i decided to take in the real version. I made the pockets out of the sleeve pattern. I shortened the cuff to the width i wanted for the pocket and removed the sides of the sleeve and adjusted some of the gathering so it was less full. 2 shirts for the price of one!!!
