Shirt of the Week
- fabman556
- Apr 6, 2018
- 3 min read
Dan the Fabric Man on Instagram!
This week your sewing pal DTFM launched a Shirt of the Week project on Instagram (find me at danthefabricman). There will not be a shirt of the week EVERY week, just occasionally. I also plan to share a Fabric of the Week when I find something interesting. OK, I understand that most fabrics are interesting, but some fabrics are more interesting than others...those I'll share with you.
The shirt project started with this shirt I found on Pinterest a while back. My shirt inspiration board on Pinterest is here: https://www.pinterest.com/dancox556/shirting-the-issue/
The Desigual brand from Spain is one of my favorites. These are always interesting (if pricey) shirts that use multiple fabrics and often graffitti-style embellishments as brand signatures. This one has four fabrics and random, mis-matched buttons as embellishments, along with some decorative top-stitching on the pocket. I also saw this shirt in person at the Desigual store at Waikiki during our Hawai'i trip in February (wished I'd checked the price!).
Stash Shopping
I went to "the stash" and pulled a few possibilities for "interpreting" this shirt, and chose these co-ordinating madras stripes from waaaay back (the exact origin is lost to time, but they've been in the stash for some time...maybe late 80s).
This "interpretation" was fairly simple. I reduced the number of fabrics to three and dug through the button box to find the random buttons. (I was thinking of your mom, Sally Davis Engle, while looking at the buttons.) My friend Sally's mother had an amazing button collection.
Sewing It Up
The shirt was very straight-forward to assemble, until I got around to making the sleeve band, which was the last step. I measured the bottom circumference of the sleeve and added 1", then cut a strip of the narrow-striped fabric to that length and about 3 1/2" wide. The ends of the strip were stitched together using a 1/2" seam allowance to form a ring. Then I marked that ring in quarters, and did the same marking in quarters on the raw edge of the sleeve.
Matching up the markings, I stitched on the band with the sleeve fabric on the bottom, as the feed dogs on the machine would take up any extra fullness in the fabric. Then I folded under 1/2" on the remaining edge of the sleeve band, lined up the folded edge with the sleeve band seam and top-stitched it down, enclosing the seam. With the band completed, I added the button on each sleeve as in the original photo to finish the shirt.
Now the first Shirt of the Week project is completed, and so is my first project post on Instagram. It was fun, and this project also cleared some space in the stash...guess I'd better look into some replacement fabric, right?
Old Business
I'm still deciding which quilt design to use for the guest room as described in an earlier post.
The design I like best (#3) is more complicated to make and will take longer to put together.
There was only one vote (from my friend Karen Devin, who voted for #4).
I'm now leaning toward #1 as the simplest to put together quickly. With Spring having arrived in South Carolina and yard work looming, I won't be making this quilt anytime soon, so there's still time to take a look at the options and send me an email with your vote.
Until next time, keep those sewing machines humming, and try to find your own balance between yard work and sewing. (I think sewing is much more important. Who cares what the neighbors think about your yard?)
DTFM
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