Morning honeybears! I have another new garment from my garment-making binge of a couple weekends ago. This one isn’t too exciting, but it’s very welcome to my winter wardrobe and not everything can be a stunner, right? Behold the new stripey shirt!

I used a fairly heavily modified Hot Patterns 1035 – the Weekender Cabana shirt for the T – and then I modified it some more. I believe this pattern is intended to a looser fitting knit shirt, but I feel pretty sloppy in giant knits, so I had removed a lot of the width from the side seams during prior sewing sessions. I like this pattern, especially for stripes, as the neckline has the perfect amount of scoop AND it’s cut on the bias, which is a fun design detail. I’ve had some trouble getting the neckband on each time I made this shirt – it’s a bit on the short side, which causes odd puckering and inevitably causes me to ‘miss’ part of the neckband when sewing to the shirt. Going back to fix those missed spots of sewing yields a wavy seamline around the neck. After my first try basting on the neckline for this shirt I got frustrated and decided to try to add a bit of length to the neckband. I didn’t have enough of the fabric left to cut a new neckband from one piece of fabric, so I instead opted to splice in about 3 inches of fabric – a bit tricky to make look nice with stripes, but I managed fairly well. I’ve circled the surgery area in pink below…

The fabric is a thin jersey. It’s a nice quality jersey – no rolling at the edges! The stripes are knitted from two different color yarns rather than ‘printed’ on after the fabric was knitted, so I decided to use both sides of the fabric as a subtle design detail. The collar and cuffs are sewn on so that the ‘wrong’ side of the fabric is facing outward.

The effect is subtle and is practically non-existent when viewed up close. Here’s a super close up of the cuff – you can see the faint shadow of a stripe next to the main stripes (along with a nice piece of Lucy fur – oops!) The contrast between the cuff and the arm is really hard to see this close!

Back up a bit and the contrast is a little more noticeable, but still not very. You can see in this photo that I left the bottom of the shirt and the sleeves unhemmed. Since this was such a nice, non rolling knit I opted to not finish the edges for a non-bulky ‘finish.’ I also left the cuffs and the shirt very long for extra coziness and layering options!

Back up a bit more and the contrast is more noticeable!

I’m feeling so-so about the shirt. I like stripes and it is super comfy to wear and adds a bit of I  extra warmth. On the flip side, the jersey is fairly thin, so when I wear the shirt on its own I feel like it’s a bit too clingy in a not-flattering way…

Even though this will be a weekend shirt for wearing with jeans and running errands, I DID try to style three ways! First up, with my circle skirt. I was really liking the dark, dark blue stripes with the gold damask print of the circle skirt! You can really see the cuff and sleeve contrast in this photo!

I like pairing navy and white stripes with jewel tones. The color combination with this coral wool skirt is fun, isn’t it? Since I left the shirt so long, I think I’d probably like this better if I belted the shirt and wore it untucked. That’s mostly due to the waistband on the skirt, though. This is a narrow, shaped waistband – not one I like for tucking!

The last outfit is an old standby and one that I currently wear a LOT with my stripey shirt with wider stripes – gold sweater, jeans and boots. Mmmmm… warm….

All in all, I’m fairly happy with the shirt. I need more of these in my closet for the winter, although perhaps from a heavier knit fabric. I currently am yearning for a grey and white striped shirt, although with wider stripes.

Happy stripe day!