Snap! It's a Heavy Shirt

 A little menswear today!

We were after a new men's shirt pattern for MrCC and knowing how well Wardrobe By Me patterns fit him - that was the natural place to start.

I opted for the Heavy Shirt - described as an 'oversized shirt for medium-weight fabrics such as flannel, corduroy, twill, denim, or canvas. The shirt has a collar and stand, front placket, chest pockets, and two-piece sleeves with cuffs.'

With regard to size I cut a 2XL and like their other patterns, this was true to size. 

This amazing blue brushed cotton is part of the Minerva core range (bought not gifted!!) and is just so vivid and soft.  I may have to borrow it as it appears to fit Olivia (my mannequin) just fine aswell.

The construction is fairly straight forward save for the two piece sleeve which has a funny little cuff placket I had not come across before. Neither a bind, nor a chimney. A sort of hybrid!

There is however a handy little video on how to deal with that and that too, was fairly straightforward once explained.

The shirt has several pocket options however none of them were requested so a 'plain' shirt was produced as ordered!

As Bagel Cat was present for a lot of the sewing and sitting on the fabric, this label seemed appropriate:

 The best bit of this make is that I had a go at snap fasteners! I ordered some antique gold snap fasteners from TrimmingShop along with the die that inserts them for the Big Green Machine. I love that machine - no fuss hardware installation. 

It was a bit trickier than buttons in so far there was no room for error on the corresponding sides of the button placket. The plaid pattern actually helped with that.

I think I did the placket the wrong way round (male/female directions) but never mind. Gender neutral shirt. 

I am pleased to report the shirt went down well. It was put on immediately and has been worn regularly since!

Another great Wardrobe By Me pattern - excellent instructions and helpful videos to go along. Would recommend. 

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If Staedtler did Coats - Butterick 6720

That time I made a High-Visibility coat disguised as Butterick B6720. Or rather a fluorescent highlighter pen...

So pink it can be seen from space. What with all these UFOs flying around at the moment I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

This absolute mega-fluro boiled wool is from Rainbow Fabrics in a batch I bought before Christmas. I am please to say I have used it all up! Two Alex coats and a B6720 later and there is now room in my sewing space.

PSA – Rainbow Fabrics have 40% off the wools at the moment and there are some beautiful colours left for Spring. If you want a bright pink like this one you can find some here. 

This is a ‘wool-mix’ and perfect for a lighter coat as it has a little drape and softness to it. It cut and sews wonderfully and I didn’t have any issues with it at all. (The fabric – not the coat construction!)

Minerva were having a February ‘#sewnwithButterick’ challenge with prizes to be won. At the beginning of the month, I was kindly gifted this Butterick B6720 pattern. (It sounds so formal without a name!) I have not made many Big 4 patterns, being put off by the ease in previous makes, and so I wasn’t initially sure what size to make.

The chart put me at a L-XL however the pattern comes in two pattern envelopes. S-L and then XL-XXL.

I made a gamble and went for the L pattern envelope assuming there would be crazy ease in there. Once I’d cut all my pattern pieces out I did give them a measure and it was actually a little snug. To counter this, I graded about 1.5cm outwards on each piece and therefore – it ended up being an XL in any event. From this experiment, I would say the pattern is true to size!

The pattern is a classic design – dare I say ‘timeless’? Princess seams give it a nice shape, the back is slightly curved and the pockets are patched on – woop no welts!

 I did modify this coat in a couple of minor ways. The first was to line the pocket pieces. I felt it would just give a much nicer finish to have the pocket interiors lined in some soft satin to match the jacket inside. This was simply a case of stitching 2 pieces together, flipping inside out and ironing. The pocket was then just treated as normal and top-stitched onto the coat where indicated. 

The second ‘modification’ was to entirely ignore the lining instructions. There was some faffy kind of hand-stitching to seam allowance method that I couldn’t be bothered with. I opted to just sew the lining of the coat in it’s entirety – like a mini-lining-jacket – stitch it into the facings of the coat and bag it out. (Much like the Alex Coat method – which had I not just made this I may not have been brave enough to do).

The lining I used was this amazing Ted Baker dead-stock from Fabworks – it has an iguana on!!! ‘Linings must always be jazzy’ mantra remains in place. This is a high-quality satin and you could probably make clothing out of it not just use it as lining. 

There are four very sharp corners in the facing at the collar which presented some challenge. No amount of pivoting and pulling could result in a crisp finish, so a ‘bit messy’ was the result but I can live with that. It was not worth my sanity to re-do it for the 19^th time. 

As the wool was a little thinner on this coat, I did pop some tailors shoulder pads in to keep the shape. Not sure if I’ve gone a bit too ‘80s with that but it does the job of non-saggy shoulders.

No buttons, just a belt on this one which means the button-hole maker could breath a sigh of relief.

So here we have it – a pink coat! Cutting it a little fine on the Butterick February front but it got there in the end.

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