London Shirt

London shirt with my new cropped Helix pants

I think that my London Shirt from the Sewing Workshop is finished. I'm not certain. Something feels off and I cannot put my finger on it. When I do, I may make some changes.

London shirt with Quincy pants

The London Shirt came out at the same time as the Cottage shirt. I made that one and love it. It may be the difference in the fabric. Mama always said it's all about the fabric. My London shirt is a soft gauzy cotton; my Cottage shirt is a light weight (perfect weight) linen. Both pieces are from Marcy Tilton, I think. Both are gorgeous; both were impulse purchases.

The cotton gauze is a design by Naomi Ito and has an interesting border print, as well as a cool selvage.

From the selvage, Made in Japan is now cool.

The London shirt is tunic length with quite dropped shoulders. I worried a bit about the dropped shoulder line as I saw the inevitable bump in the forearm even on Erin, the gorgeous model at the Sewing Workshop. And it bugs me in my version too.

But I love the rest so maybe I'm fixating on something minor. The collar is a simple rectangle that I interfaced with cotton batiste. The side seams are forward and create an interesting grain in the back side seam. It has a cut similar to TSW's Liberty shirt, an all-time favorite of mine.

Liberty Shirt

London Shirt

The sleeves are fairly plain. I extended mine so that I could roll the sleeves and see the pretty border print of this fabric. I also played with the border print down the front and down the back.

I'm thinking that maybe the buttons overwhelm this a bit. I may try some shell buttons that will perhaps blend better with this super soft fabric.

This super soft fabric does feel great to wear!

Now Quilting

Well, I was quilting, but now I'm done.

Every so often I get the itch to make a quilt. And then I've got it out of my system. I so admire the quilts made by dedicated quilters - all the precision and attention to every detail - but I can only manage to quilt in small doses. Then my attention wanders back to clothing.

This one was inspired by a car load of gifted fabric from a friend at church. The first batch required machine washing. By the time I finished that, I found that I actually liked some of the fabric. I felt it deserved to become part of a quilt. It is mostly older prints but by flipping it over, I had solids. I gravitate to solids more than prints.

The pattern I used (mostly) is a simplified courthouse steps. The quilting is simply vertical lines more-or-less an inch apart. I was actually a pretty satisfying make, in the end.

The back of the quilt is made from some white muslin included in the gifted fabric. It had a few flaws, so I added a bit of boro to the quilt back. I also used some of my remnants from thrifted men's shirts. Those too had some flaws requiring a bit of boro repair.

This is to be a present for DS. I wonder what he will think of boro repair!

The rest of the gifted fabric will be used in future sewing camps or go to my local American Sewing Guild chapter for redistribution. We will use it to make projects like this: