A jazzy paisley patterned shirt and some black wool trousers

Yep, it's another one of those hi-lo hem shirts I made before and have washed and worn. Time to make another! The fabric is typically 'me'...loud with lots of colours and...look!..it's paisley pattern which I absolutely adore.

I bought this fabric from John Lewis in Oxford Street when we had out little holiday in London last November.I haven't seen it in the Edinburgh John Lewis so I'm glad I bought it when I saw it. I think there's a lot of viscose in it because although it's lovely and silky to the touch it crushes as soon as your head's turned. I can't even remember the cost per metre but I know I bought my default 2 metres. It takes that much to make a shirt for tall, long-armed me and I also wanted room for manoeuvre with pattern placement. This fabric was a fray-er to work with, though!

I used New Look 6374 and cut view A. I didn't change add any length to the body and I think I may just have added 1" to the sleeve length, I can't remember as I cut and sewed this up during the Christmas and New Year break. Yes, it's taken this long to get round to taking photos! Mind you, I've also had a stonker of a cold and bad cough which everyone seems to have had, so I haven't sewn a thing for 2 whole weeks. I must have been seriously ill!

The sleeves are supposed to roll up and button with a tab. I managed to sew one tab on the inside of the sleeve and the other tab on the outside of the sleeve. Numpty! The lurid pattern must have dazzled my eyes...that's my excuse! Anyway, I unpicked the 'wrong' one and haven't got round to unpicking the other one as I've now decided I won't be rolling these sleeves up. Lazy!

The other mistake I made was to use a woven fusible interfacing on the collar stand. That thing just isn't going anywhere! I used the same interfacing on the plackets but it doesn't seem too bad. Live and learn, people! It hasn't stopped me wearing the shirt though so that's fine. 

Right, I'm going to tag on a pair of black trousers I made recently to this post because...they're black and almost impossible to make them look interesting in photographs. The fabric was a lovely black stretch wool, probably crepe, that I bought in Mandors in Glasgow when we were there for a wee overnight stay in September. The pattern is rapidly becoming my favourite and has superseded my Ultimate trousers pattern. I love the wide yolk and can see I'll have to add some pockets to them in the future.

There's quite a lot of lycra in this fabric, so much so that I decided not to line them at all and pray the lycra would prevent bagging at the seat and knees. So far so good! 

See? How do you make black trousers interesting? I used the New Look 6035 pattern that I got free with Sew magazine last year and have used once before. I took ages to finish the hems. Isn't that always the way? They were hanging about on the dining room table for weeks on end until I had a tidy-up. Glad I did as I've washed and worn them a few times. Yes, I'm happy to wash wool and I prewashed this fabric before cutting. I always use the Wool cycle on the washing machine, a wool liquid soap and hang them up to dry, nope I don't dry them flat. It's survival of the fittest in my wardrobe! 

High-low hem shirt

This is a shirt I made just in the short bursts of time I had after work last week, and also on Sunday afternoon. It just proves how productive you can be with small amounts of time. I think this is a relatively new pattern, New Look 6374. I've recently thrown out a RTW shirt in a similar design although it didn't have the high-low hem. I wasn't sure about high-low hems on me but I'm becoming a convert with this shirt and the recent jersey top I made.

Gathers at the back yoke

Marvel at the intricate placket and topstitching!

Nope, you can't see anything at all of the structure of this shirt because of the patterned fabric, but it's the structure that makes it sit and hang nicely. There is a single layered front and back yoke, joined with a shoulder seam. there are gathered sections where the front yokes join the front shirt pieces. Same at the back.

There's a small grand-dad type collar and a placket at the front. This placket was probably the trickiest thing about this blouse and I made sure I'd sewn it carefully before clipping to any dots. Doing that sort of thing before sewing just makes me come out in a cold sweat so I tend to do things my way! Don't you sometimes think, with pattern instructions, that they sound good on paper, perfectly logical to follow, but in reality you just know there's a minefield waiting for you if you go down their route? It's easy to create a perfect drawing but that's just not what happens in real life.

Anyway, enough with the words and on with the sewing. The sleeves are meant to be worn rolled up and there's a button tab to hold them up. The sleeves have a 1.5cm hem turned up twice and machined. Nothing fancy there but I made sure I made them long enough so I could also wear them rolled down if the weather was cooler. I think I added an inch to the sleeve hem.

Very satisfyingly I also found the perfect buttons from my button tin. They're a sort of caramel coloured wood. Black ones just disappeared in this pattern. What doesn't disappear against this pattern! Speaking of pattern, I'd say it a cross between very large fingerprints and a kind-of animal print, in a sort of cream, beige, black and caramel. So there you go! Very me.

It's a 100% polyester, nothing fancy! I bought it in John Lewis when lurking the sales fabrics a month or so ago. This wasn't in the sale but I couldn't give a monkeys! This is a shirt to wash and wear is intended for work for autumn/winter and let's face it, probably spring too. I didn't prewash it before cutting and frankly if it does shrink I'm not sure I'd notice as it's quite roomy. Well, all except one place, the back yolk seam. That's probably because there's a seam joining the yolk and back piece, then I top-stitched it so the seam is very firm. What do you mean you can't see the top-stitching?!

With the sleeves unrolled it's almost got a bit of a seventies-vibe going on as the sleeves don't come in towards the cuff, creating a bit of a bell shaped sleeve. Here's a side view of the all-important high-low hem.

All in all, I really like this shirt. As a note to anyone out there who's thinking of making this shirt, I'd like to point out that I did not add any extra length to the body. I'm 5'9" tall just so you can get an idea of how the pattern sews up.

I've bought a tripod so I can take photos without bothering C all the time. This was my first time using it and it took me a bit of time to get it set up right but I'm pleased with these photos. Just need to get started with Gillian at Crafting a Rainbow's six month-long The Better Pictures Project. Just so you know, I took these last Sunday so that was before this project started. A better background would be good and the first challenge is to find a nearby location 5 minutes from your house. Shouldn't be too difficult...famous last words!