This shirt I made for Tim's birthday has taken a few twists and turns throughout the sewing process! It definitely followed the highs and lows of the creative process, as seen in that meme that was passed around the sewing interwebs a while back...
First: I chose some fabric (relatively) new to my stash: a green/brown micro-corduroy shirting that received through the Slow Fashion Fabric Swap, organized by Samantha at A Gathering of Stitches. This fabric is perfect for Vermont in style and color. Impossible to accurately or consistently photograph, but perfect nonetheless!
The shirt is made with Tim's favorite TNT pattern, McCall's 6044, with the yoke, tower placket and one-piece sleeve hacks I've used on my last few iterations of this pattern. But this time I used the chest pockets with the flaps since this shirt was to be a more casual shirt. And it was those flaps that brought me to my first twist...
The pockets and flaps are among the first things to been sewn when making a shirt. My first twist came when sewing the buttonhole on those flaps. I went off plan and spontaneously decided to sew those buttonholes in red thread instead of coordinating green for a pop of color.
Once I'd sewn those, I was looking around for other spots on the shirt to pop some red. I did the top and bottom buttonholes, the cuff buttonholes and the X on the tower plackets (in triple stitch to make it stand out). I finished the curved hem with red bias tape for a colorful surprise on the inside.
I felt like I needed more red, though, to make it look deliberate. I polled my fellow sewists on Instagram and, on their advice, decided to do bar tacks on the tops of the pocket flaps. I mirrored those bar tacks at two spots where the yoke meets the sleeve, and at the side seam hem.
Then I panicked that I'd done too much! Would Tim wear it, or had it veered into cheesy, overdone territory?!
Then I put the brown tortoise-shell-ish buttons on and all was good again! They toned down the red accents enough to make it extremely wearable. I love it! He loves it! A hint of red makes this otherwise simple shirt fun and exciting.
And this shirt pattern, McCall's 6044, continues to be a huge winner for me. I feel like I should branch out, and even tried muslining another pattern before starting this shirt, but I always end up coming back to this TNT because we're so happy with the fit.
