This Strawberry thief print was a remnant from my previous White Tree Fabrics dress. It’s too lovely to let languish in the fabric stash so it’s now a shirt (McCalls 5433).

Work look

The original plan was to make a short-sleeved shirt, but there was enough for a basic long-sleeved shirt. I can always roll up the sleeves when I wear this shirt to work.

I had a couple of hours one morning with no power at home, so in desperation to do something, I cut out two shirts. I don’t like wasting time but I wasn’t going to do the housework as a substitute to sewing.

When I work with prints, there’s always the issue of print placement and do I add piping or not. Thankfully this pattern has a folded button band at the front so I can play with print placement and button placement.

Heading out to drinks look

This year one of our local retailers sold Liberty print shirts and when I saw the retail price I decided to make my own shirt from the remnant fabric.

The fun part of using such a dominant print like this was to line up the birds across the shirt body and sleeves. Originally I thought I might only have fabric left for cap sleeves but there was enough for long sleeves using a mock cuff.

I love the darkness of this colourway of this print and I wear plenty of blue to work and on weekends so it made sense to apply blue piping on the collar and button band and use blue buttons between the bird print.

I know we’re in the middle of a blisteringly hot Australian Summer but the cotton in this fabric breathes well and is a lovely weight for this shirt. With the prospect of wearing this shirt a lot, I applied French seams and folded over the armhole seams so this shirt will survive many, many washes because it’s going to be worn a lot.

Piping and machine feet:

I started with store bought piping so I used the cording foot on my machine to prep the piping.

Then I used the zipper foot to sew the piping on the collar and front seam.

When I sewed up the collar, I used the piping stitching to guide my sewing. Yes, there were some instances where I had to resew part of these seams just to get the piping to sit neatly.

back view

Work or weekend?

Clothes for work and weekends sit separately in my closet. I do this to keep these too aspects of my life separate. But this shirt might just throw me off kilter.

Best news of is I now have my very own Liberty shirt!

Merry Christmas everyone!