I’m a dress maker. I like making dresses. But sometimes I think, why not make something else? Something comfortable, something I can wear every day? Something mundane like …. a shirt (gasp)?! Of course, it’s difficult choosing a shirt or blouse pattern when your fabric of choice is cotton (not so stretchy!) and you refuse to do button holes (too lazy). I decided to try this lace shirt, only without the lace. The current trend of making entire garments out of your Grandma’s doilies is not for me.

I wasn’t exactly sure how the pattern would work in normal cotton, so I decided to make a wearable muslin. What a novel thing for me! I’m usually too impatient for muslins, and I’ve lived to regret it. Good thing I found this adorable little flower print for 3€/m in my local fabric store, then! And it was a very good thing indeed. I had cut the pattern in size 36, but when I tried on the muslin I felt like I was wearing a tent! I had put in a zipper to be on the safe side, but that was obviously unnecessary. I felt a bit silly until I discovered that the shirt was insanely comfortable; I just cut off about 20cm (!!) from the sleeves and I’ve been happy with it ever since.

I changed to size 34 when I started the real garment, but discovered I didn’t have enough fabric for the ginormous sleeves (minus the 20cm, even!). So I bought this black secondary fabric. It’s a bit more elastic so I thought it’d be a good fit for the sleeves. It was pretty easy sewing it up after the muslin since I knew all the tricky parts of the pattern. Who would have thought?!

While the blue shirt is more comfortable, I adore the print on this one. Cats! I love cats! CATS ARE AWESOME. I really can’t thank Fabian from Schnitterling enough for this great find. I wore it on my recent work trip to Romania and it got lots of compliments from people.

What was your greatest fabric discovery?