I’ve wanted to modify a man’s button-up shirt for forever, but I was too intimidated. I’ve been learning a lot about drafting my own patterns, and so I decided to finally tackle the project.
It’s been both fun and frustrating. It’s kind of like playing mad scientist 🙂 I have all the parts to cobble together, and the possibilities are endless. It’s great! But there’s a lot of trial and error involved, and I’ve had to take out quite a few seams. One downside of shirting is that it’s not very forgiving of needle holes. I’m hoping when I’m all done they won’t be extremely noticeable.
So far I’ve cut down the body of the shirt and fitted it with darts and seams and I’ve created gathered sleeves.
Right now, those sleeves and that neckline look like the prairie-style dresses my mom made in the early 90’s, and homie don’t play that. (Sorry, mom!)
I plan to V the neck a little and top it with a mandarin collar. Then I’m probably going to try my hand at some ruffles. I think they will be raw edge ruffles. I’m using the existing cuffs from the original shirt. they’re wrist size, so they’re too small to completely close around my upper arms (boo.) The cuffs will just stay open on the outsides and be for decorative purposes. The sleeves will have to be a little tighter to accommodate those cuffs. And I’m shortening them because I tried the cuffs below my elbows and it was too irritating.
I’m pretty happy with how the back turned out. I created a seam down half the back to fit it better, leaving a little gather at the waist. I like the way the existing yoke looks, but it has some gathers the feel weird. Next time, if I notice the original shirt has those, I will take it apart. But I’d gotten too far into the process to stress about that.
The sides will have splits at the bottom for comfort and ease of movement. I hope I enjoy wearing this shirt! I hope to have it done by the end of this week, but it’s been slow-going. I just work on it til I get too annoyed and I pick it back up when I wish I had a new shirt 🙂
