Planning and Design
This fabric is one a bought quite awhile back from Miss Matatabi because it was cute and red. I had no ideas on what to make with it at the time so only bought 2m.
2.5 years later, I decided it would make a good Blaire Shirt. Unfortunately I was not organised enough and it became winter and so I lost the motivation to sew this. But now it’s summer and I need some short sleeve tops to wear to work so I’m finally getting to it!
Materials
- Pattern
- Blaire Shirt (Style Arc)
- Fabric
- Falling Sakura – D (Miss Matatabi)
- Buttons
- Yellow Rimmed 4-hole Buttons (from stash)
- Thread
- Rasant col. X0120
- Interfacing
- 100% Cotton Lightweight Fusible Shirting – White
Sustainability Check
👍 Fabric and interfacing are 100% cotton so biodegradable
🤏 Rasant is OEKO-TEX but not biodegradable
🤏 Buttons are plastic but are recycled from a previous project
Construction
Preparation
I wasn’t quite prepared for how much tetris-ing would be required. It was so long ago that I assigned this pattern to this fabric that I wasn’t sure what checks I did haha. Looking at the fabric requirements again, it specifies 1.5m of 140cm wide fabric so I must have assumed the extra half metre would be adequate.
Because it was going to be so tight, I did test placements first and thought I might need to supplement a different fabric for the bias strips (which are my own addition to the original pattern) and inner collar stand. So I took out a bunch of cotton fabrics in the same colour series. I was leaning towards the red cotton voile, even though the shade was brighter, because it was lighter, not heavier, weight than my main fabric. But the orange quilting fabric was the closest match to elements in the fabric design… In the end it wasn’t necessary because I managed to eke all all the pieces with the meterage I had 😊
Then the night I was planning to start sewing this shirt my husband got caught up in a bike race crash and broke his collarbone…so this went on the backburner for 2 weeks. Because I was so exhausted I knew I would screw up if I tried to sew in that state.
Sewing
This ended up becoming my Boxing Day project. Once again, the previous wearable toile made this a very relaxing make. I got all the nesting right without messing up. Like with the Tomigaya Shirt Dress I cut the interfacing to the seam allowance and it really does give a nice curve. I think I’ve gotten quite decent at attaching the collar band to the shirt front with the burrito method, now to focus on making the top of the collar band where the collar gets attached looking neater. I think I need to guide stitch all the way around the curve and use fusible tape to hold it down more securely. This will also alleviate my paranoia about the edge ‘coming apart’ to the right of the topstitching.
I also finally got the buttonhole and button placement right. Even though I offset the start of the collar band buttonhole, I need to sew the actual button in line with the ones on the front placket.
Reflections
This is a very soft cotton! I think it will be very nice to wear. I forgot to rotate the overlay pieces so that the stripes ran in the other direction, but I think it probably works better without this detail. Because the stripes are wavy, I think it might have looked a bit weird. And also the design is ‘falling sakura’, but if they are horizontal then…what is it, suspended sakura? The bias of the sleeves means that there is still some visual interest with the stripes.
Things I learnt:
- Collarband button placement
Categories: Sewing
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