OoOoOh I love-making shirts and I like to challenge myself when doing so. I picked up this fun, bright and happy cotton fabric on sale, gave her a wash and got to starting on my idea which was inspired by this Pin on my Pinterest board ‘Sewing Inspiration’.

Now here’s the boring part for you readers the construction-I started with my generic shirt pattern cutting out as per normal sewing in the darts and making a placket that would be attached later. I then took a measurement and trimmed off the tops. I made a series of strips cut on the grain and used the loop turner to bring them right way through and top stitched down either side.

Using the dressmakers dummy I pinned the shirt down and started to criss cross the sewn strips in a fashion that I was happy with placing a pin in the centre to stabilise. I made two interfaced epaulettes?  these are to support the sewn strips and bias-cut armscyes. I used so. many. pins. It was a little nightmarish to look at. The first thing I did was to quickly sew a couple of stitches into the centre of each criss cross design to keep it from moving about. I then attached the placket to the shirt, once I hit the top each sewn strip was stitched inside the placket which was then top stitched down.

The back was done in a similar fashion, I placed each sewn strip inside the collar facing, epaulettes and bias cut armscyes. All top stitched down, I like the top stitching. Once everything was stable I released the stitches from the criss crosses. Boring to read I know anyway in conclusion I love the shirt she turned out great, the perfect addition to my summer wardrobe. A funky pair of shorts may need to be made to finish things off, not in this fabric though too matchy, matchy like wearing denim on denim; perhaps a plain colour with accents?

Now to take the shirt out to the park to see how she holds up. Not bad here! She seems to blend in rather lovely with the blues, reds and greens of the kiddies jungle gym.

…and not too bad here either, as you can see I’m rather pleased with this one I think it’s unique and can imagine this in different colours to suit my many fashion sewing moods. Black would go down a treat too..

Lets name this one Park Life -Blur.

Did you see my dress I posted yesterday? Great fabric for that particular pattern I think.

Thanks for looking.

Happy Days.