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I made a new shirt recently, using the Pauline Alice Mestre pattern … and I just have to say that this new design is extremely impressive to me with many beautiful, clever and thoughtful details. In my opinion, it’s hard to create a “classic” shirt sewing pattern that stands out from the sometimes predictable masses, but this one manages to do just that! Details to follow…
Fabric first; I used a piece of linen that was originally white, and that I dyed myself using a Japanese indigo plant brewed dyepot, from a natural dyeing workshop that I attended a few years ago. I absolutely love the natural blotchiness of the natural dye and am so pleased I finally found a really worthwhile project for this precious stuff!
I used a white topstitching thread throughout, and most of the buttons were harvested from an old, yellowed business shirt of Craig’s. It’s quite gratifying when penny-pinching proves itself to be useful! and these are really very nice little buttons. You need a lot of buttons for this pattern and I only needed to supplement with a few not-quite matching ones to make up the full complement of 18.
Now, the Mestre; this design is superficially a classic, button-front shirt, but upon closer inspection a number of small but quite distinctive features begin to make themselves known; the chest pocket is an interesting 2-pocket layered pocket, the side seams mostly consist of buttoned plackets, curving down into a gracefully rounded side edges, and the cuffs are likewise interestingly shaped with an asymmetrically curved profile.
The back is pleated into the yoke; it’s supposed to be pleated the other way but I personally like for a pleat to go inwards, like this. I really like the little hanging loop; my linen was too stiff to stitch right sides together and turn out as instructed, so I just pressed the folds in place and topstitched the loop to make it work.
I must also say that the instructions for the Mestre are absolutely excellent… the construction of the side edges, sleeve seams and armscye seams is a completely new one to me, and results in a perfect, flat-felled seam. I don’t want to give away the details, but it’s very very clever!
Likewise the construction of the sleeve/cuff placket was totally new to me, and results in a cleverly engineered placket with all raw edges enclosed. So nifty!
A very small detail that you might not notice without paying very close attention is that on the front buttonhole placket, just one lone buttonhole is situated horizontally. I find subtle and explicable details like this to be very charming.
The lower hem of the shirt is completely faced, with the same facing doing double duty for the side button/buttonhole plackets. The finishing for this area is likewise well thought through and results in a beautiful finish. You need to do a fair bit of machine basting… later removed, and I have to confess I haven’t bothered with basting in a while! but I am glad I followed the instructions to the letter because the technique outlined was the absolutely best way to finish.
In fact, I’m extremely impressed wth the thoughtfulness that went into the details of this pattern and am excited to make it again some day!
I also made my hat and my shorts…
Obviously the most worn items in just about anyone’s wardrobe is bound to be underwear… and so one is obliged to often update these things, even though you don’t get the benefit of showing of your new creations to your friends, much less the general public! I’m still using up small pieces of cotton jersey in my stash that are too small for anything else, thus this is another patchwork set. Oh, pattern? the Cloth Habit Watson pattern, adapted over time to become a long term favourite of mine.
I made this very snuggly and cosy shirtdress/jacket thingummy recently, the pattern is the new Fibremood Ildri … I think it is called a shirtdress, but it can obviously be cut shorter as a shirt or jacket too. btw, while it has a second version pictured here, when I got it the pattern only had the first, long version with covered button band..
To belt or not to belt? that is the question. This is how I wore it yesterday… I think I prefer it belted mostly, but this makes the pockets practically inaccessible… !
Anyway, I decided to run up two new pairs of knickers to match the bra. Obviously I didn’t have any more of that pretty Liberty jersey, but I did have a big-enough remnant of reasonably well-matching blue jersey from which I managed to cut out two new pairs of Watson knickers. I cut out a few small flower motifs from the old Liberty knickers and hand stitched them on too, just for fun. This was a very small project, barely worth blogging really but I’m so happy with it! Sometimes small things can make you really happy.
I could have sewn new covers, however… well, why not knit up some of my wool stash instead? You might recognise this orange-y coral pink cushion cover as my 
This bright unicorn-pastel one was from a stash given to me by my daughter-in-law Lainey… anyone remember the Flurry yarn? I don’t know about outside Australia, but here there was a short-lived fashion for wearing scarves made from this type of wool. There was actually just over three balls of the same colour way in the box Lainey gave to me, which I thought could be enough for a cushion cover. I felt it looked quite nice with the other cushion too. The gods were smiling upon me, because there was the perfect amount for a second cover, with zero leftovers. I knitting in the round, then grafted with Kitchener stitch at the bottom end, I then stuffed in the old cushion insert and stitched up the top end with the leftover wool. So no, you can’t get the cushion inserts out again without undoing a seam, but I’ll probably just hand wash the cover and insert all together and I’m sure it will be fine.
The skirt is our very own Meelup pattern, which is currently my number one top favourite. It has all my desired features; deep pockets, no zip, and a streamlined, yet comfortable and roomy silhouette. I carefully lined up the pockets to match the pattern in the skirt front; Pattern Matching 101. The skirt is lined in deep green lining fabric, not a perfect match colour-wise but t’was already in the stash thus making it the perfect candidate.
I also used a khaki cotton for the pocket lining and red buttons for the same reason… I know I know; the purist in me shrieks “NO!” however the thrifty-miss in me reassures myself that it’s not like you can ever see either of these wrongly coloured things when you’re wearing the skirt! I used the same khaki cotton to make bias binding to finish the raw edge of the hem inside…
The little tee-top is kinda based on another old favourite, the epaulette top from “she has a mannish style” by Yuki Takada. I had enough tartan for the sleeves and two big patch pockets, and the body is cut from an ivory wool felt that has been such a very long-term stash resident that I cannot remember its provenance. I did not include the eponymous epaulettes, … also I lined the body fully with an ivory silk habotai (also long-term stash) because the ivory wool is really itchy.
I stabilised the neckline with a biascut strip of cream cotton, then attached the lining to this, before stitching them all down to the top around the neckline.. yes, quite complicated but gives a nice finish, imo. The armscye of the lining is also stitched to that of the outer, and the remainder of the body and side seams float freely from each other. Having a silk lining makes it quite beautiful to wear!
I finished the lower raw edge with cotton bias, just like with the skirt… You can see here how I used dark green thread in the bobbin to stitch on those patch pockets… and no that is not a mistake! I discovered that a cream coloured thread to match the wool showed up just very slightly on the outside of the pockets, not terribly but enough to bother me…so I unpicked that and re-did it with the green thread. Now the topstitching on the pockets is nicely invisible… 🙂
I’ve also run up two new ivory merino T-shirts in the past week… this is another of our patterns, the Pinjarra twinset. These two items are of course the tee part of the pattern, and both have the scoop neckline. I basically made these to use up the last of a length of ivory merino that I’d bought a few years ago but only made one tee so far. Now it has happily realised the purpose it was bought for, at last!
A few little moth holes had sprung up during its confinement to the stash, so while I could cut mostly around them, I darned the few unavoidable ones up before making my tops… The merino is so fine, I used regular stitching thread for darning… and even then it looks thicker than I’d like.
Honestly, though, it really is near invisible, unless you get up really close! and I know these two items are going to work hard in my wardrobe next winter… btw, can you see how I used a white thread and and ivory thread in that double top-stitching? No?!
I’ve made some new jeans, and the overly wide-legged-ness of them is so funky and awesome … it’s silly but I am really feeling like this sort of thing at the moment! I’ve been working on these for several weeks now … taking my time to get the fit just right and exactly how I wanted them. It was fun to work slowly on something that I really wanted. They are super comfortable and easy to wear, almost like a tracksuit, only not. Way better.
For the waistband lining and pocket flap linings, I used a gorgeous linen gingham, leftover from 
The topstitching thread is two slightly different shades of orange, to explain; the waistband and belt loop topstitching is a brighter orange than the remainder of the jeans. Actually, now they’re finished I realise you can hardly see the difference so I’m not sure why I was worried about it, but honestly on the spools the colour was noticeably different!
