Tim was in need of some new short sleeve button-up shirts, so shirts he got!
I made him two short sleeved versions of his TNT pattern, McCall's 6044. For fabric, I raided my stash for a couple of Indonesian batiks (procured when we lived there, oh now going on 5 years ago... where does the time go?!).
I chose two pieces that could share the same color topstitching thread (white, in this case), so I could just power through and batch sew them.
I wanted to emulate this batik shirt I made for him a few years back, which he loves and gets tons of compliments on, despite his initial concerns about it being "too much." It's a bit faded now from wear, but I am still proud of how I took advantage of the border print to make a really stunning shirt.
For both of these shirts, I took a similar pattern-Tetris approach as I did for that previous version, squeezing these shirts out of the short lengths of batiks (intended to be worn as sarongs).
I cut the two sleeves from one border, on the cross grain, the button bands and pocket from the other. Then the main bodice pieces, collar and collar stands all from the main part of the fabric. The bodice pieces are cut on the cross-grain, too.
This blue/grey and white batik has a relatively narrow border on each end. The fabric is super soft; not crisp at all. The narrow border meant that I could only get one button band from the border, so I cut the other from the main fabric. I put the border on the outside and used the lines as my folding lines. Pretty pumped about how that turned out!
The multi-colored batik is funny because it is a stamped batik (batik cap) made to look like ikat, which is a weaving technique rather than a printing technique. The fabric substrate is a much tighter weave, so it has a crisper hand than the grey.
I love how this one turned out. Two wide strips of border allowed me to cut both button bands from contrasting fabric, which looks quite cool.
I'm pretty chuffed with how both shirts turned out! I think Tim likes them, too. He's definitely not fading into the crowd in these shirts...
