Burda 7767 Archives - Page 2 of 6

Chocolate with a little zing; Tim’s Christmas shirt

25/12/2012 11:00 pm \ 23 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a shirt for our eldest son for a Christmas pressie…
using Burda 7767 (surprise!!) and some lovely deeply sludgy, purply-chocolate linen bought from the Fabric Store in Melbourne during our September visit there, and I found the perfect turquoise buttons and matching thread in KnitWit.
Tim is quite a snappy dresser and cares about his wardrobe, he likes clothes that have that distinctive modern-hipster look; classic lines but with odd details and a slightly grungy edge. This pattern does have very classic lines, and I thought the unexpected neon jolt of the turquoise buttons and matching thread I used for topstitching throughout adds the edge that the shirt needs to steer it firmly away from boring (from a young man’s point of view) “classic” territory and shimmy it into the “hipster” sphere.
To really bring the vivid turquoise visually into the spotlight; I added buttons galore and OD’d on the topstitching, going for double top-stitching throughout, wherever a button or topstitching could be put, there it went!
I added two bellows breast pockets. The pockets have angled lower corners and the pocket flaps have contrasting curved lower edges, for a bit of visual non-matchingness… something quirky, therefore hipster.

The sleeves have a separate folded-up cuff with double buttonholes and buttons for decoration.

The armscye seams are flat felled on the inside using my tutorial for flat-felling a curved seam here to achieve this neatly, and the side seams are French seams. The lower edge is curved and finished with a narrow hem.

By the way; this shirt is a true button-down shirt.

This other shirt that I made for Dad is NOT an button-down shirt… see the difference?

A button-down shirt is of course one in which the collar buttons down onto the body of the shirt…. NOT a shirt which simply buttons to put on and take off the shirt, for heaven’s sake. A coupla months ago Club BMV sent around an email advertising a course for sewing a tailored shirt, which is all well and good and probably an excellent course… however the blurb waxing lyrical about the “classic button-down shirt” was accompanied by a photo of a shirt that was clearly not a button-down shirt. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was pained to the core at the sight of it. I’m very glad to see they’ve rectified their error now though.

Details:
Shirt; Burda 7767 modified, my review of this pattern here, made of purply-chocolate linen

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, mens shirt, Tim

Looking sharp! Craig’s birthday shirt

22/12/2012 2:37 am \ 61 Comments \ Carolyn

It is my husband’s birthday, and I have made a shirt for him!

I used ~~my favourite~~ my only! men’s shirt pattern Burda 7767, adjusted for a perfect custom fit; and a gorgeously high quality, striped shirting cotton from Tessuti’s in Melbourne, bought in high cloak-and-dagger secrecy in a moment while Craig’s back was turned during our trip there in September; mwahahaha!!!! Cannot believe I managed to pull it off actually, a hidden-but-in-full-view purchase; my gosh, but I’m one devious little wife-y.
Cool as a cucumber, my friends… Coooool. As. A. Cucumber. 😉
For the white collar, collar stand, button bands, cuffs and plackets and the arrow-shaped cap on the single pocket; I used a very nice white cotton that I bought for my own use from Fabulous Fabrics. It hurt like mad to have to cut into “my” cotton. It really did. Honestly, I searched and searched for white fabric that was a reasonable textural match for the striped fabric but couldn’t find anything by the time I wanted to start on Craig’s shirt. Can you believe white shirting cotton would be such a rare beast??? well, it is. Trust me. I’ve scoured high and low, and it is currently non-existent…

Thus explaining and self-justifying why I pounce upon, buy up big, and hoard high quality white cotton whenever and wherever I see it…. and this is one of my treasures (hoarsely croaking) ” …. My precious….”
I think the shirt really needed the white contrast bits; in fact I think they make it. I really wanted this shirt to be a super high quality business shirt, like the sort he could wear in important professional situations, and look mighty spiffy at the same time. NOT one that would provoke any “oh, and did your wife make your shirt for you then, hmmm?” comments… 🙂

And I have to admit I am pretty chuffed with it. Actually I am quite thrilled with how this looks; the fabric, the quality and the finish. I think this is the best quality shirt I have made so far.
The armscye seams are flat felled inside, and I used my own tutorial for flat felling a curved seam to achieve this neatly. The side and sleeve seams are French seams. I bought the little black matte buttons from Fabulous Fabrics also.

for those like me who like checking out the insides…

Details:
Shirt; Burda 7767, striped shirting cotton, with white cotton detailing

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, Craig, mens shirt

Cement worker

21/11/2012 11:00 pm \ 41 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a shirt for Dad’s birthday 🙂

I used Burda 7767 custom-fit to his size that I fine-tuned with last year’s shirt, and a fine-grade linen from Spotlight in a shade called “cement”. Very appropriate for a man like my Dad who is the handiest handyman you could ever hope to find! Srsly. He is. Cementing would be an absolute doddle to Dad, I’m sure 🙂
Last year’s birthday shirt was a sort of “nice” short-sleeved shirt to wear out to smartish events, and this new one is more casual, more suitable to Dad’s usual daytime activities; like working in the shed building stuff like The Chicken-Plucker (don’t ask) and his own lathe, tinkering with the ute and trekking out through the bush to tend to his hives and chop wood. And fire-fighting, although I kinda hope not!
Being linen it will be a good cool shirt to wear all summer, and this one has long sleeves to protect Dad’s arms from the sun. He can roll them up if he desires without fear of embarrassment caused by tatty interior finishes: since the side and sleeve seams are French seams, and the armscye seams are flat felled seams. I used my own tutorial for flat-felling a curved seam to achieve this neatly.

The pockets are bellowed and pointed at the nadir, and button closed with arrowhead flaps. The buttons are from Fabulous Fabrics. The lower hemline is curved, and as always I sewed a spare button inside to the side seam.

After I had finished sewing it; it was all nicely pressed, with the creases ironed into non-existence and all perfectly smooth and neat, like a newly sewn garment always is. I looked at it askance. It looked so … pristine. A bit immaculate. It didn’t look like a “Dad” sort of a shirt at all. My Dad is very much a low-maintenance sort of a man. So I gave it a second wash, a good shake-out and hung it out on the line to dry in the sun. It came up with a very satisfyingly lived-in look; comfy, rumpled and crumpled. I did not allow the iron anywhere near it. Now it looks very “Dad”.

A little tip; when you trim off the seam allowances and points off of the interfaced pieces of collars and cuff and the like before turning out, it can be handy to keep the larger trimmings. They can be cut down into small squares, which since they are already pre-interfaced are useful for stabilising buttons sewn in areas which have no facing, such as the cuff split button…

and yes, this was the secret thing I have made recently…. I used a small strip of the leftover linen for the waistband on my lace skirt.

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, Dad, mens shirt, tip

Khaki military shirt; 6 different ways

23/10/2012 7:29 am \ 27 Comments \ Carolyn

Oooh, it’s been a while since I did one of these posts… which is silly since I do get a big kick out of these myself. Playing in one’s wardrobe, the bestest play a grown-up girl can have, no?
Sometimes I like to play with new garments, to see how they are going to work out with things I already have; sometimes with an old garment to revisit it, and see how it’s holding up.
This shirt falls into the latter category. I made it using a men’s shirt pattern Burda 7767, of deep olive linen and with carved brass buttons, and first posted it here. I really loved the slouchy easy vibe of the military trend and added lots of little details like arrow-head tabs, flaps and pin-tucked pockets to make my shirt look as much like an army shirt as possible. Is the military trend on the way out? Oh well. I still absolutely love my shirt. It helps that casual and grunge-y is my all-time thang, and that khaki is one of my best colours :))
This is such an easy garment to have and to wear. It is linen, and I don’t even iron it. Ever. Yes I’m serious!! It’s supposed to look crinkly!
I’ve worn it several times here on my blog already, and for today tried to mix it up in a few new ways…. and yes, the fact that I have worn it loads of different ways already and can easily come up with a whole host of completely new ensembles incorporating this shirt… oh, did somebody say “way too many clothes”…? 😉
Ahem, without further ado.
Below left; the casualness of the design combined with the airiness of linen makes the shirt a perfect pairing for shorts on a hot summer’s day. At right; I really love the look of a slouchy man-style shirt blousing out over the top of a high-waisted pencil skirt. I wore this outfit last week sometime. Hmmm, looking at this I’ve realised it is pretty rare for me to actually show any of my handbags in my photos, would you prefer to see the whole ensemble including the handbag in future daily outfit photos? Please let me know….

Below at left: yes it does go nicely with my new capris as well… this is another outfit I wore last week. I adore this safari colour mix of khaki, beige and black too. At right; worn as a “jacket” to grunge down a slightly dressy, more winter-y ensemble. I wore this exact outfit once or twice over the winter just gone.

Below left; it looks a touch smarter when belted, over a little skirt and with my slouchy boots. Seriously, the colour khaki goes with all the colours in my wardrobe… I had trouble picking out just one of my skirts for this look. Middle; another winter-y but casual ensemble, with jeans and boots. I really did enjoy wearing the shirt as a sorta jacket like this during the cooler months. Truth be told; being linen it didn’t add much warmth but I just liked the look of it! At right; a sludgy and neutral foil to bright bright bright blue. Incidentally, this last outfit is the one I am wearing today…

I’m sure you can count, and have probably noticed that there are seven different ways here, not six. Sorry, I just got carried away and then I couldn’t narrow it down!! So yah, seriously. I sure hope the military trend sticks around for just a bit longer!

Posted in: fashion, Uncategorized \ Tagged: 6 different ways, Burda 7767, shirt

A double-sleeved shirt

04/01/2012 3:39 am \ 18 Comments \ Carolyn

Remember I said I had made 6 shirts over the past month and a half? well here ’tis t’ sixth!
This blue shirt was was intended for one of my boys and was pretty much finished, but I was getting more and more disillusioned with it and realising that they would probably not find it in the least bit cool. The colour and the fabric are too flat, the style is too old, and the whole deal is not hip at all… :(( so I set it aside and made other plans for their pressies…
Then I recalled an editorial picture I had seen and loved, of a Celine shirt from pre-fall 2011; which appeared in that picture to have double sleeves. A long sleeve of a different colour peeping out from underneath a prim high-collared short sleeve shirt… I had loved this look and mentally filed it away for future use. Now whammo realised that I had the perfect candidate all ready and waiting!!
So, I went online to find a picture from the original release of the collection (below) and saw straightaway that the sleeve that inspired me is not in fact a double sleeve, but appears to be a single and pieced sleeve with a seam at the midpoint… but by this time I was in love with my falsely inspired idea of the double sleeve and so this was what I set out to do…
I have had this long sleeve, white linen men’s shirt (below) sitting in my refashion pile for… ahem, mumble years. Er, hazarding a guess at five? … cough cough. It doesn’t fit anyone in my mob, but is still pretty well-made and the linen is a lovely fine quality. I took the scissors to it and liberated its sleeves (the rest of the shirt will be put to good use, don’t worry…)

source

Taking the blue shirt; well I had to cut off my perfect flat felled sleeves and flat felled side seams (a wrench!) and resize the shirt to me, since all my boys are a lot bigger than me. I’m afraid I just didn’t have the heart to go through re-flat-felling these seams again either, since I was getting severely “shirted-out” by the time I had got to this one; number six. I was kind of like, oh yeah, whatever, run ’em through the overlocker (brrrrrrrrr! and 10 seconds later) yup, that’ll do.
I didn’t unpick the pockets either, and just left them completely in situ. This is why they appear quite big on my little chest and are disappearing into my armpits. Hey, I can live with that. The white linen sleeves were also quite massive on me so needed resizing as well… this turned out to be more challenging that it sounds, since the sleeve seam was a French seam and double top-stitched down in place. Tricky! I got there in the end, but the insides are not gorgeous… basically I ended up just overlocking the raw edges of my new seam and double top-stitching this down from the outside to match up with the remainder of the original seam as it goes down in the cuff. The cuff and the placket both are perfectly double top-stitched, and I wanted to keep all that intact and mimic this finish as much as I could. I think the seam matched up pretty good, yes? Can you see where the old topstitching ends and the new begins?

I wanted the sleeves to be fully separate from each other as the white sleeve emerged from out of the blue sleeve, which was a bit of a puzzle to mesh together… I ended up deciding to sew the blue sleevecap in flat, sew up and finish the sleeve and side seams of the shirt; and then after this set in the white linen sleeve. This meant the white sleeves could only be machine stitched in so far.

I completed the set-in by hand.

Last step; to topstitch the allowances of both sleeves together down to the shirt body…

Just to show the garment full-length… (might not wear it this way much)

Luckily I hadn’t yet done the buttonholes on the shirt and so could put them on the “female” side of the shirt. I love these gorgeous wooden buttons from Fabulous Fabrics, the same ones that Sam chose for his shirt here.

Details:
Shirt; Burda 7767 modified, of shot cotton in Sky and with long white sleeves from an old shirt
Skirt; Vogue 8363 modified, of burnt orange raw silk, details here, my review of this pattern here, and see this skirt styled in 6 different ways here
Shoes; Bensimon, from seed

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, daily outfit, shirt, tutorial, Wardrobe Refashion

Craig’s shirt

30/12/2011 6:31 am \ 20 Comments \ Carolyn

The penultimate shirt, for now… (and I am definitely thinking of something different to make for my boys next year!)
This particular shirt, another Burda 7767, was made using shot cotton in True Cobalt, and is a Christmas present for my husband. I had just made for him a special (imo) new shirt for his birthday recently, but I ran up this other new one as well since I didn’t want him to feel left out when the others were all opening their gifts of handmade clothing on Christmas morning. However. This is the sixth mens shirt I’ve made in the past six weeks, and you might imagine I was becoming just a tad shirted-out by the time I came around to this one…? (if so, you imagined correctly) It was a struggle for me to get enthusiastic about finishing this last one to the standards (ahem) I’ve set myself and that my menfolk have become accustomed to… 🙂
In fact it only had the very last little touches put to it just last night 😀
The warp of this fabric is a deep periwinkle and the weft is only a barely lighter blue, leading to an extremely subtle “shot” effect unfortunately. Almost too indistinct… in fact to be blunt I was quite disappointed with this fabric when it arrived. I’m used to the Rowan shot cottons really wowing me with their iridescence, but the colour of this one seemed pretty flat to me when I received it. The perils of internet shopping.

So, the fabric being very plain, the shirt really needed some interesting bits and bobs to lift it above the overly mundane. Even though Craig does like his shirts plain-ish I still thought it needed a little bit of something…

There are added arrowhead shoulder tabs and cute little miniature arrowhead sleeve tabs.
It also has weirdly funky diagonal pockets. Hmmm. They seemed like a good idea at the time. I don’t think he ever uses them much, anyway.

So! …as mentioned above; this is my 6th shirt in as many weeks… but I have only posted five! Has all this crazy shirt-making made me see a double shirt somewhere, where there is but one? Well, no. I can still count…. so here’s the story; I had practically finished another shirt originally intended for one of the boys’ Christmas presents before I decided the fabric was just not right for any of them and put it aside, uncertain what to do with it. And then inspiration struck and now that shirt is in the process of being adapted into something, just a little bit different, and for me… results to appear here sometime soon.
Watch this space…
Later dudes!! (signing off feeling pretty lighthearted since I have finally finished with The Shirts)

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, Craig, mens shirt

Tim’s shirt

29/12/2011 8:40 am \ 11 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a shirt for Tim; again Burda 7767 (blush). And I’m embarrassed to confess that there are still a couple more versions of this in the wings too… sorry! I hope lots of mens’ shirts will not get too repetitive… in my own defence they are all just a leettle bit different from each other in some way. I hope that is noticeable.
But back to this particular one…
I’ve noticed that Tim, and lots of young men now, are all wearing their shirts a lot more shrunken in appearance to the classic “men’s shirt” silhouette. More fitted to the body, and with shorter and smaller sleeves. So I tailored this shirt accordingly; and in case you’re wondering, Sam didn’t want for his shirt to be “trendy” like this although I actually did make his a little more narrow in the body than previously too.
I made the sleeves shortish and when he opened his present asked him if he would like them hemmed fashionably even shorter but he said he liked them this length.
I went with snaps for closure, and left off any tabs – there is a good reason for this; below. The arrowhead pockets and their square-cut flaps are cut with the grain and are matched against the shirt background but with no attempt at fancy bias stuff; again, a perfectly good reason for this is coming right up.
The reason for leaving off my “regular” young mens shirt details? well, to use a technical term… this fabric was a blinkin-nightmare to work with, and almost killed my enthusiasm for men’s shirts entirely. I seem to make a habit of choosing very sewing-unfriendly fabrics (like here) for Tim’s shirts but he always professes love for them and wears them a tonne, so in the long run I’m just happy that he is happy!
The problem with the fabric? crinkly and stretchy. A totally hideous combination for tailoring. You’d think I’d have learned by now, right? I always tell myself it will be easier; this time, and then it never is. My best attempts at making two identical shoulder tabs were so dissimilar I just couldn’t put them on the shirt, and just the pockets and pocket flaps were enormously difficult… getting that irregular stretchy check to match up. I know, sounds ludicrous to say that the humble pocket flap almost defeated me, but there it is. I even made up a set of pocket flaps and tabs in a different fabric, but decided in the end they just looked wrong. Honestly Sam’s shirt was a walk in the park compared to this one. I fair dinkum revelled in that non-stretchy fabric!
But this fabric was the stuff I just knew Tim would love in his new shirt, I could just picture him in it, and knew that it would sew up into the kind of cool shirt that he would probably pluck out himself if he spied it in a trendy, young mens’ boutique. So I just had to go carefully and get there in the end, through sheer determination.
Needless to say there is no flat-felled seaming on this thing. Raw edges all overlocked, and simply top-stitched down just like that. And applying the hammer to the shirt when putting in those snaps felt goooood…
And you know what? Got those darn checks to match up, eventually!

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 7767, mens shirt, Tim

Sam’s shirt

27/12/2011 8:16 am \ 22 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a shirt for Sam…
Hmmm, sounds extremely deja vu-y given that this is what I nearly always make for them, for seemingly every occasion requiring gift-giving. But you see, all my boys are sweet enough to appear genuinely pleased to receive my shirts as gifts, and what is more, actually request them.
To have my shirts in demand is such a nice ego-stoking state of affairs, ahem. Plus I do so much enjoy the tailoring process. Yes, really…
So how could I not comply with their wishes??
Using Burda 7767 (shock!) with modifications, and he came with me to Fabulous Fabrics himself (genuine shock!) and chose the checked fabric and the wooden buttons to go with it. This fabric is a polycotton, non-stretchy but with a permanent crinkle in it.
Fair warning; excessive chit-chat about pattern matching coming up…
Below; the back yoke… when one is working with checked fabric like this, it is imperative to a rabid obsessive like me that that slight concave curve of the upper back edge be spaced evenly across as well as for the straight lower yoke edge be exactly even across the seam-line, and for the stripe to not disappear very slowly down into one side of the seam, which especially in a crinkly fabric like this can happen almost without you noticing… and require unpicking and re-doing, ahem. Anyone who has sewed with stripes and checks has visited that one before, I’m sure.
Probably why I have this lazyman’s preference for solids when tailoring…

Also, just an aside, when I am using less stable fabrics, such as this crinkly fabric, to make tailored shirts; I cut the two yokes one with the grain and the other cross-grain as pictured below. I find this gives a bit of extra stability in an area of high strain.

Purely decorative buttons, one on each sleeve hem.

I went to enormous pains to match up the check pattern on the bias-cut arrowhead pockets as it relates to their corresponding bias-cut arrowhead flaps. They are perfect, if I say so myself. I’m not even going to mention how much minute twiddling, precision-pressing and adjusting this took… oh wait, I just did 🙂 LOTS! Also please note that the two pockets and their flaps are exact mirror images of each other. Over Christmas Day lunch I started what I thought was a very interesting conversation with some female relatives about this sort of dressmaking minutae… until I noticed them glazing over fairly early in the piece and stopped. Incidentally, do other seamsters find that variations in the structure of clothing is a compelling and perfectly good topic for conversation, and that it is inexplicably hard to incite any passion at all in “ordinary” people who take their clothing totally for granted and don’t notice nor even care about the All-Important Details?! sigh, I guess this is why we blog…

So, back to the shirt at hand… oh, and by the way, please note the collar has purr-fectly symmetrical pattern placement. Thank you.
And tabs, matching mirror images of each other.