Back to real sewing (or I hate knits)

After my little foray into sewing with nylon lycra and wicking polyester, it was with great relief that I started on a lovely piece of shirting cotton.
I say lovely, but I am lying, because it is a cheap (but not very inexpensive -$12 per metre) lightweight cotton from Spotlight (2008). I do, however, love the print- and it is not a knit, which suits me just fine at the moment.

This is from TopKids 52 again (shirt #9). I have started with size 104, only 5 sizes less tall than my son, and as Deb pointed out in the comments on my last post, it is much easier to add length than to remove width.
Annoyingly, I still had to trace out the pattern. I have made this many times previously, including size 104 (I love keeping an online sewing journal, I would never have remembered which size I made before blogging)but the only tracing I have tidily stored in a ziplock bag with the magazine, is size 92, about size 2 RTW equivalent. The 104 tracing must be with my rashie vest pattern. It really is time to sort out my patterns.

I fiddled about with embroidery for the pocket. The print is slightly off grain, but I cut it out with the print vertical - and even on this small shirt, the pocket hangs a little crooked.
The black print shows through on the wrong side. To prevent this from marring the appearance of the shirt, I used plain white shirting for the facings, and undercollar.



I added a yoke to the back, by splitting the pattern above the armscye. I widened the back by 4 pattern stripes, unfortunately not quite enough to allow matching of the pattern on both sides - just look at the left side for me, OK!

The yoke lining and pocket lining are white cotton batiste. I bound the back neck opening with a self bias strip, and lining the yoke gives me something to which I can sew the bias.

This was so much more fun than the rashie. My son may look scruffy in the pool, but he will look smartly dressed at Christmas lunch.
Materials cost - $12 fabric, about $1 thread, recycled buttons, lining remnants, and previously used pattern. (the rashies and jacket were about $10 each)