It’s one of those deep mysteries of life that I have a full wardrobe and yet I have never anything to wear. Case in point: When the weather got warmer this year, I realized I needed more shortsleeved shirts. Curiously enough, I have a lot of shortsleeved shirts – but they’re either a decade old or one of those gifts-by-bulk my mother gives me that are more about what she thinks I should wear than what I actually like to wear.

Consequently, I picked up two jersey fabrics for little money at the Stoffmarkt Holland in Mannheim. I have a weakness for a good anchor motif and couldn’t resist the red jersey with the star print. Bold colour + cute pattern = TAKE ALL MY MONEY.  I had this raglanshirt pattern from an older Burda Style retro spread (that I had always sort of fancied) in mind when buying these fabrics. It was cute and seemed simple enough.

(Ignore that rogue thread under my armpit. :P)

Of course I hate sewing with jersey. I don’t trust jersey, that slipperly bastard, it never stays the same size. You can cut one shape and the next minute the jersey looks completely different. The nerve! I much prefer cotton or wool, to be honest. But now that I had bought it, I needed to see project jersey raglan shirt through. I muddled happily through, even bothered to do pattern placement on the front flap (three anchors perfectly in a row! wooooo!), but my newly found discipline came to a screeching halt when I tried tackling the neckline.

Burda wants you to cut bias tape from the fabric itself to use as binding but I hate jersey even with bigger pieces so I’m not cutting long thin strips from it. For this reason I experimented a bit with storebought bias tape. At first I used pink satin tape for the anchor version, but it turned out too stiff for the fabric. Cotton bias tape worked fine, however!

There’s still a bit of a gaping issue, though. The bias tape isn’t the only reason for that – for starters, there’s way too much fabric in the back only you can’t see it in the pictures because of my hair (sorry). Secondly, the little flap in the middle is handsewn to the neckline after it has been hemmed so it pulls it forward in a rather awkward way. (I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself clearly. The words, they aren’t my friends today. I apologize.)

That said, both shirts are quite comfortable and I immediately wore them basically right after I finished the last seam. I don’t think I’ll use this pattern again, to be honest, but they’re fine the way they are. It’s not like I expected it to be couture – I wanted something to wear combined with skirts or trousers for simple everyday outfits and I think they live up to that goal quite nicely.

Head over to Me Made Mittwoch and AfterWorkSewing to check out all that beautiful handmade clothing!

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Pattern: BurdaStyle 02/2010 Nr. 122A, size 42

Fabric: Jersey from Stoffmarkt Holland in Mannheim

Photography: Dad