Ms. Hunting Creek is a writer in Virginia. Her work has appeared in The Toast, The Airship, The Washington Post, and Medium. When she isn't rooting for the California Golden Bears, she designs textile art, reads cookbooks in bed, and wrangles two cats, a golden retriever, and her husband..
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
In Progress: Hawaiian Shirts
Mr. Hunting Creek loves the shirts I make for him. He gets lots of compliments and comments and he always brags that I made it custom for him. He has been asking for more shirts, and I agreed BUT he had to help me cut them out. I have both MS and arthritis, and my hands get very tired of cutting. He then said these magic words:
" Why don't you teach me how? I can cut everything for you. Then you can just sew".
Like Buddy the Elf, I have favorite things and non-favorite things:
Favorite Things about Sewing
Actual Sewing of Things
Collecting Beautiful Fabrics to Make Beautiful Things
Collecting Patterns
Finishing Things, see above
Non-Favorite Things About Sewing
Winding Bobbins
Cutting Things Out
UFOs
Rework
Stress, or working on a deadline
He selected McCalls 4079, which is a great pattern with many variations and good instructions.(It is OOP but there are several other options that you could try, including Colette's Negroni and this one.)
I have made it before, so it has already been adjusted. He then was escorted to the shirt fabric shelf and selected two tropically
themed fabrics, one of which I had purchased in the state of Hawaii, so you cannot get more authentic than that.
I always, always buy a yard extra for shirt purposes, after an unfortunate experience with accidentally slicing something and having not enough fabric to cut another piece, leading to some very creative problem -solving that I would prefer not to repeat.(I use extra shirting scrap pieces for pocket linings, shirt collar bands, inside yokes and cuffs and boxer shorts and other uses.) The extra fabric allows me to match patterns without stress, and stress is one of those Non-Favorite sewing things that I'd like to avoid. This is supposed to be fun, after all
Men's casual shirts are pretty easy compared to women's blouses, but I have a small quibble with the pattern envelope above. I have never ever made a shirt in three hours. Also, why on earth would you want to do that? Today I will wind two bobbins (because nothing is so annoying as running out of thread while topstitching) cut out the interfacing for the collars and make the collars, since that is the fussiest part, so I like to do that first.
Tomorrow I'll sew the yokes to the front and back. Then attach the collar, sew on the sleeves, sew the side seams, hem sleeves. Thursday mark buttonholes, and sew buttonholes. Sew on buttons. Then hem. Hemming after buttons and buttonholes is something I learned to do after a sad experience where the fronts were ever so slightly off and I noticed it and then could not not notice it so the shirt had to be rehemmed. Ripping out and redoing hems is another NON FAVORITE thing, so we like to prevent that from even happening.
He wants it by Saturday. Did I mention that I hate deadlines?
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3 comments:
3 hours is sewing time, not cutting and prep time. They also say that some of the techniques they demonstrate take longer. That is, if you use a serged or pinked seam finish, you can sew it in 3 hrs. If you flat fell (and I do), they give instructions, but warn it will take longer.
What a nice husband.....think I may suggest this to mine since he is currently unemployed and my job is interfering with my sewing and knitting time.....
Your husband figured out what is probably the number one barrier to people sewing more: the pinning and cutting out. Bravo!!!
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