My Red Threads

For some inexplicable reason I have been sewing a lot of red garments lately.  Remember my Polka dot tankini?  Red.  Back in May I whipped out a pair of red twill Jalie 2908 shorts.  I know...Jalie 2908 is the jeans pattern that I have made 4 times already.  Well, the shorts make it 5 times.  Since making them, I have lost a little weight and they are now loose.  I will continue to wear them and bask in my weight loss.  :)

For Father's Day, I made my husband 2 new Hawaiian shirts (to be blogged about sometime in the future).  When ordering his fabric from Hawaiianfabric.com I ordered myself some fabric too with the intention of making myself a Hawaiian shirt.  Last week's swim meet had a "Red" theme, so I took that opportunity to sew up my Red Hawaiian Shirt.

Big thanks to my 7yo photographer!

 

 

 I used New Look 6197 which has both a men's and a woman's version of the classic Hawaiian (aka casual) shirt. 

 

 

The woman's version has a shirt-tail hem and bust darts.  I made a size 14 which had a finished bust measurement of 43" and did a 1" FBA. Thank goodness I did...it would have been too tight otherwise.   I learned my lesson from this top:  remember to ignore the ease across the back when considering whether or not it will fit over your chest.

My major complaint was that there was too much ease at the sleeve cap.  I could tell right from the pattern piece and followed this tutorial to remove the excess.    Unfortunately I chickened out and didn't remove the entire 1" of extra ease, so I wound up having to do the basting stitches and ease the sleeve into the armhole.  I will be brave and bold next time and remove it all :)  FYI: The men's version doesn't have nearly that much ease.

My final observation: shirt-tail hems are not the easiest thing to hem.  Seriously.  I'm going to straighten it out next time.

So while there is still some red fabric in my stash, next up is blue...Stay tuned :)

 

Hawaiian Shirts, New Look 6197

Back in November, my husband asked me to sew him some Hawaiian shirts for our December warm weather vacation.  I was surprised that he asked me to make him something and I was happy to do it.  I bought some Hawaiian print fabrics from Hawaiianfabric.com and went out in search of a suitable pattern.  There were no Big 4 pattern sales going on at that time, so I focused on New Look which are cheaper in general.  I found New Look 6197 which had the added benefit of including pattern pieces for a woman's shirt complete with darts.

 

 

 

I spent over 20 minutes searching through the New Look drawer at my local JoAnn and putting all of the patterns in the proper order without finding a copy.  Sigh.  Then I turned around...behind me on the racks of patterns was exactly what I was looking for.  Yay!

 

The pattern was very simple to put together, I cut an XL, and put the sleeves in flat.  One thing I would change is that the pattern tells you to under-stitch the front facing.  That makes the under-stitching visible when the shirt is on, like this:

 

Visible stitching:  No good!

No good.  I picked out the stitching to an inch or so below the top button.  Here is the first finished shirt:

I am very proud of my pattern matching:  Check out that pocket!!

 

The 2nd version of this shirt was made with a cotton/poly blend also from Hawaiianfabric.com

There is a pocket on this one too, can you see it? 

hint: the black turtle facing 8:00 is on the pocket!



 

My husband was thrilled with these shirts, and seeing how quick and easy these were to make, I'd be happy to make more.  I'll leave you with one more 'action' shot: