#Earth Month 2016 Post 1: “Muslin” Becomes Wearable.

Is it earth month yet? You can disregard that other “foolish” day associated with April 1; let’s celebrate by doing some sewing.

In honor of the beginning of earth month, I completed a long ignored UFO (unfinished object). It started out as a “muslin” for a Sewing Workshop pattern, and it turns out that I love the fit and shape of this pattern. Maybe I should have discarded it after determining that, but it went into the “unfinished” corner of the closet. I pulled it out in all its unfinished glory and made this trial garment into a wearable piece.  Here are the details of this project.

Sewing Workshop Pattern, Tribeca Shirt:

Issued in 2004, I could not find this pattern on the Sewing Workshop website, but there are  pictures in their gallery of shirts made by users of the pattern. The image above is from reviews posted on Pattern Review.  The pattern has darts in all the right places. A french dart, bust dart, waist darts in the back, elbow darts, shoulder darts. That is why the shape of this jacket is so right.

• The neck design is the funnel style, overlaps at the neck front where the points extend slightly at the top becoming slightly droopy when going down the front, where the wrong side shows – a modified lapel.
• Sleeves are two piece, with an elbow dart; another classic tailoring feature. The sleeves also sit really well at the armscye.
• Three buttons with square patches sewn under the buttonholes to stabilize the closure area, the stitching showing on the right side. There is no facing, so the closures need the patches.
• It is finished with a 5/8 inch hem all around the front, neck and hem.

Fabric – Cotton pique:

My fabric choice for this “trial” is a cotton pique in a loud print. It would have made a cute skirt for one of the daughters which it was originally intended for. But not a jacket/shirt.  (Who knows what lies ahead for a piece of fabric? It’s kismet). So, the pique is a trial garment. Something made me save this item and elevate it from the muslin category. Could be I got excited about the good fit. Anyhow, here it is.

“Muslin”

“Wearable”

The only change I made was adding front facings (interfaced) so when the collar drooped the facings would show rather than the wrong side of the fabric.  Because the wrong side of my floral fabric was not pretty – at all. Of course, I skipped the squares behind each buttonhole.  The downside to the facing is that we lost that attractive droop in the neckline – the fabric gained more body, therefore didn’t droop attractively; so I had to choose between two evils – less-droopy collar OR unattractive wrong side of fabric. I chose the facings in a butter yellow linen (scraps leftover from a self-made shirt years ago. Another earth month activity. Use what you have).

I have a spring jacket now; and certainly intend to use this pattern again. I think a denim with jeans-like topstitching would be good for a modified jean jacket look.  What else would you suggest?

Have you “sewn” your spring garden yet? Yeah, I know – lame analogy.

Samina