no longer winter sewing: Sew Over It Hackney shirt, round two

We're getting into the third week of self-isolation and the last few days have been extra stressful for me. I couldn't even tell you why, I've just been tense and frozen and tearful since Thursday. It's both impossible to do things and impossible to not do things, and speaking to people on the phone so often is really wiping me out. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad to have people in my life who love me and want to stay connected (and really glad to be able to have a way to continue my therapy sessions during a time like this), but... I'm so bad at the phone. I was never good at it, and then I worked an entirely phone-based job, and now speaking to anyone who isn't my mother stresses me the hell out. It feels like a really stupid thing to complain about, but there it is.

On to Patrick's birthday shirt, which was part of my winter plan but it seems a bit silly to title things "winter sewing" when it's nearly April.

I had made a pledge that if my second attempt at a shirt worked, I would make a third out of properly fancy fabric. Originally I'd been intending to do this for Christmas last year, but he requested that I make him another hoodie (something he had a slightly more pressing need for) and reschedule the shirt for his 40th. 

I'd assumed this would be a Liberty print shirt, but it is not. We can't decide whether it's Liberty's prints or Patrick's taste that's changed, but we looked for months and couldn't find anything that was right. Eventually I found Storrs Fabric through someone else promoting it on Instagram, and they exclusively make Egyptian cotton lawn in a variety of very Patricky prints. This was the one he was most enthusiastic about, so this was the one I went for. Handily, he then instantly forgot he'd ever seen it, so it was still a surprise on the day! It's the Santorini print, which comes in several other colourways. I almost bought the pink, but happened to see it in person on a trip to Shaukat and the base of that one is a very definite peach that would not look right on a man of this skin tone. 

The Sew Over It Hackney shirt fit Patrick really well last time, so I made the exact same thing again. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but there's something slightly off about the fit at the back. I did notice a couple of his other shirts doing the same thing, though, so it's possibly that he's changed shape recently. 

Knowing that he'd want to wear this for special occasions and thus would want to be able to wear cufflinks with it, I changed the cuffs. The first shirt I made had double cuffs, but the one thing he complained about with that shirt was that the cuffs were too skimpy (rather than the correct answer, "this shirt is very bad and nobody should wear it") so I didn't want to use that pattern piece. I measured the cuffs on some of his pre-existing shirts and concluded that what I needed was the original Hackney cuff doubled in height plus 1cm and squared off at the top. This has worked really well and I'll probably use it on any shirts I might make going forward.

Obviously this shirt hasn't really had an outing yet (he wore it for a celebratory wine drinking session over Zoom on his birthday, if that counts), but overall I'm happy to claim this was pretty successful. The fabric is vibrant and soft, the fit is mostly still there, the double cuffs came out well, and it was much easier to do everything this time round. I've gotten the hang of buttonholes now (as well as button placement, which was a major issue the first time), and my progress on tower plackets from "what the hell is this" to "OK, if I follow these instructions very slowly and carefully I can probably get it" to "well, it's extremely obvious that you just do this and you're done" was actively funny to me. Shirt number four won't be happening for a while, but I'm sure it'll feel like much less of an ordeal when its time comes.

This photo is pretty blurry, and I'm only including it to tell you that this was the day we found out our next door neighbours are dealing with quarantine by getting a GOLDEN RETRIEVER PUPPY and we're furious that someone else has a puppy and we don't. Patrick here is seeing the puppy for the first time and possibly plotting to steal it. 

This is why he's my favourite.

Up next: I'm not sure. I've taken a break from the dress as it's been causing me no end of problems, so I'm trying to find a slightly less annoying project to get things flowing again. Whether I have a finished project or not I will post again on Thursday - I think I still have a couple of things from a while ago I never got around to posting about, and I'm also thinking about doing another round of "what the hell do I make this fabric into". Ideally, though, I'll have made something!