The Liberty Shirt

Once upon a time there was a girl (let's call her Jorth) who decided that she wanted to make a shirt. This was a decision that she made with some trepidation, for generally shirts did not suit her. A long torso combined with a skinny (elegant, her father used to say, but she knew the truth) neck did not for a happy shirt wearer make.

But this girl worked at a fabric store, which was selling lovely, sumptuous Liberty wool/cotton that was just begging to be made into a shirt. So the girl went online, and looked and looked for the perfect shirt pattern. To be truly honest, most were so... so homely that she recoiled from them in horror. But there was one which kept catching her eye. To be sure, in the pattern photograph it was no oil painting, but the need to make a shirt was beginning to consume the girl, and she decided to take a chance on it.

The shirt progressed slowly. It was labelled as "Easy to sew", but the sewing was painstaking and finicky. If an edge wasn't pressed to exactly 3mm, or a seam sewn perfectly straight then the garment would look very average indeed when finished. The kind of project, in fact, that you would inform people that you had made yourself, and they would reply "Yes... you can tell." So Jorth progressed very slowly, and took a lot of care to make the shirt as skillfully as she could.

Finally the day came. Jorth sewed the last button onto the button facing, and went into the bedroom where the full length mirror was. Pulling off her top, and slipping on the shirt she had a moment, just a moment, of quiet panic. What if it looks awful? What if the fit is all wrong? What if it sits lopsidedly? What if it just looks crap?

Looking into the mirror she saw that the shirt was none of the above. The fit was fantastic, and the shirt itself looked amazing paired with jeans and a belt. It gave her a slim, modern silhouette - exactly what she had been dreaming of. Jorth smiled, and now that the stress and worry had passed began to think that maybe, just maybe, she should make herself another!

Project Details
Pattern: Simplicity 2255, size 8, Style A
Fabric: 1.6m Liberty wool/cotton from Tessuti Fabrics
Notions: 10 buttons

My favourite part? The tabs. I'm loving those tabs!