Fairfield button up for Josh

The first post of 2018 (not counting my year summary post) stars one of my favourite people and an unselfish make...

When I first learned to sew shirts I made one for Josh, but it didn't fit well at all. I only took measurements before starting and didn't check fit throughout the process and it came out too big. Since then I have wanted to try again, but never gotten around to it.

This Christmas I was knitting presents for my family and I wanted to give Josh something handmade too. He doesn't really like knitted/woolly stuff, so it was a great opportunity to try my hand at another shirt. I had the perfect fabric, this plaid brushed cotton from Fabworks. Josh likes plaid shirts, I like him in plaid shirts, simple! In terms of pattern, I decided to try the Thread Theory Fairfield. Last time I made him a shirt I used the Colette Negroni, which I think is a really great pattern, but I liked the more classic look of the Fairfield for this shirt.

Only trouble, this time I couldn't fit it to him at all, because it had to remain a surprise. So I used one of the most reliable tricks in dressmaking - I took the measurements of another shirt that fits him well and matched this one to those. Which led me to cut out a size M, with a bit of grading towards L at the waist for a more straight fit.

Because of the plaids there is a lot of pattern matching and I dare say I did fairly well...

...except for the back, where the box pleat goes across two stripes. In hindsight I should have cut it so the box pleat is on one of the brown stripes. But you live and learn.

Although, check out how nicely the back yoke and collar cut on the bias came out! I'm pretty chuffed with that! The yoke took two attempts to get the dark brown diamond where I wanted it.

I also cut the front pocket on the bias, and like it, although I see now that I should have moved it a few millimetres towards the button band.

In this picture you can also see that the shirt stretches a little bit across the chest, so for the next one, I'll have to make it a bit wider in that place.

Because I was sewing this shirt as a surprise and I live with Josh, I had to work on this only when he wasn't home. Which shouldn't have been too hard this autumn as he was travelling a lot for work. Except I was too. So finding the time was tricky. I did the cutting one day and started the sewing another. And only a few days before Christmas I spent a whole day finishing it. That day was massively rushed, because I only had until Josh came home from work and that was it. So the sewing towards the end is quite sloppy (I finished it 20 minutes before he got home). But, because the cutting was done meticulously, I don't think it really shows. So much of good sewing really is down to the cutting, and this project confirmed that for me.

So I'm happy that I cut it out on a separate day. I'm not sure I would have been as careful in my cutting if I had made it part of a bigger job instead of its own job, allocated a whole afternoon. I think this is how I will work in the future too.

And overall...I think it turned out well! And Josh likes it (a lot more than the first shirt I made him!), which is the main measure of success here.  I love sewing shirts, so now that I've figured out the measurements I think there'll be many more.

We visited our friends in the North of Sweden over New Year's, where I took these photos. Gorgeous, no? They have an amazing log cabin (parts of which you can see in the first photo), and visiting them there and just hanging out in the snow always is the most relaxing time of the year. And a time to wear lots of plaids, obviously!