Fish shirts
It's been an uncharacteristically long period of time since my last blog post, during which work careened towards the ultimate knocking-off for the year and I subsequently entered full holiday mode. I'd like to say summer mode, but it was 16 degrees today in Melbourne, with a cold wind too, so that bit we keenly anticipate.
There was not much appetite for travel this so-called summer but plenty of creative intentions. One thing I have been meaning to do is start sewing my own clothes.
My dislike for clothes shopping only gets stronger as time passes and (as my knitting track record demonstrates) it's not effort or cost that really bother me so much as all of the other steps that begin with 'enter clothing store' and end with 'walk out with clothing'.
And look! In the week off I've had so far I've made two fish print shirts using Closet Core's free T-shirt pattern. Closet Core I think I heard of via Kris' blog so thank you for that Kris if it was indeed you!
It's a boxy cut, which I like, and I made it in an oversized 16. The first attempt is more cropped than I would usually wear but I like this short length a lot more than I thought I would. It is something of a 'first pancake' though - in the second, longer attempt, I did a much better job of the shoulder binding.
The fish print is an organic 100% cotton jersey from Spotlight. Multiple fedifriends have noted that this reminds them of posters at the fish and chip shop back in the day. I don't remember seeing those posters at the fish and chippy as a kid, I just remember riding home in the bongo van (as the family vehicle was known, a sky blue Suzuki Carry with a yellow rear door) with the slightly-too-hot precious paper parcel on my lap.
The suggestion from my friend Ange, who has also been sewing her own clothes, was to keep making the same pattern over and over for the sake of improvement. This was good advice. I might do the next one with a different fabric though. I still have some fish print left over so maybe someone else will win T-shirt lotto soon.
While I'll persist with improving the T-shirts, I'm looking forward to branching out into other items of clothing too. This may be a question of where to find patterns that I like.
