Purple and Pink Batik shirt

 

Here's my latest project a purple batik shirt.

I tried to balance the amount of pink showing on the shirt by putting the pink pocket on the less pink side of the blouse.

Although I've made this pattern multiple times before I did have a few issues along the way.

Firstly I had neatly sewed up the collar band, to discover I had not sandwiched the collar in between and so had to unpick it, insert the collar and resew. The stitching was teeny tiny and unpicking took ages.

Then I realised I'd cut the standard cuffs but only (barely) 3/4 length sleeves (due to fabric limitations), and they were going to be too tight if I put them on as is. Fortunately I'd put the scraps in with my quilting stuff, so fished them out and managed to cut two rectangles to extend the cuffs. I've installed them with one seam lined up with the sleeve seam and the other at the back of the sleeve (where a placket might be). Opposite on each sleeve. No one will ever notice of course but I was pleased with my little fix.

The final  annoying bit was just setting in the sleeves as the batik has no give whatsoever, so a lot of adjusting the easing stitch and making little snips to get them in. 

Happily I had suitable buttons in the drawer, though being 4 hole buttons they were quite fiddly to sew on

I used the same pattern as I did for the boat shirt, but as I only had just over 1.3 metres I was only able to get 3/4 sleeves with bands (not long sleeves with cuffs). Even getting this involved a lot of single layer cutting.

I bought the fabric in Boyes in York on 29th June, so another one not in the stash for too long. It had 2 yellow marks on it but I was able to have one on the back of a pocket flap and the other disappearing into the back hem.

This wasn't quite what I intended when I bought this fabric, but I am really pleased with the outcome.