Kwik Sew 2777

Recently I purchased a copy of Kwik Sew 2777 to make a shirt for my husband. Unfortunately, I did not have my husband around for fitting! As some of you know, my husband is a professional musician, and for the entire month of March he was on tour. I was left to my own devices...and spent most of my time in the sewing room.


I had been wanting to try to sew some shirts for him, since he has particular tastes and fitting issues. Since he wasn't there for me to fit, I decided that I would use one of the shirts that he has practically worn out to figure out the size. Based on flat pattern measurements, I sewed him a large and now that he's home I can finally see how the fit worked out. I am really pleased with how close the fit is right out of the envelope:



As you can see, I could stand to both shorten it and widen it slightly over the hips, but the shoulders fit very well:


Shoulders and sleeves are always an issue with him because he plays the upright bass, and the way he stands when he plays makes the fabric pull across his shoulders. He also likes the sleeves to be a bit long and loose for freedom of movement:


You might notice that I made a mistake in the front of the shirt...when I laid out the pattern, I was not paying proper attention and while I got the right front aligned with the stripes, the left front is just....slightly....off:


If you look, you can see that wide light stripe angles towards the button placket. Some interesting things about this pattern, it is drafted with 1/4" seam allowances. I had to pay really close attention and remind myself as I sewed, because I am used to sewing with 5/8" allowances. But, the narrower seam allowances made the collar and collar stand a lot easier to work with. One odd thing though was the way that the sleeve plackets/gauntlets were constructed. It was unlike anything that I could find on any shirt in Jeremy's closet:


Since I wanted this to look as much like RTW as possible, I redrafted the plackets using the instructions posted on the Off The Cuff blog. I had to do a little tweaking, as mine ended up a touch wide, but I am very happy with how they look...very nearly there!



I am really happy with how this shirt turned out. Some minor adjustments and I will have a real winner for him!

In the meantime, I have a few things that I would like to make for myself now that the weather is getting nicer. I love this dress from the April, 2010 Burda:


I think it is a great warm-weather dress, and could be really versatile, although I will redraft the back to have darts and contour the waist, because otherwise the dress is pretty shapeless:

But, to make the shirtdress that is currently residing in my head, I need to find some classic men's oxford fabric, like this:


Wouldn't that be a fantastic dress?? Yes, of course it would! But thus far the only oxford cloth that I can find is >50% polyester...and a poly dress kind of defeats the purpose of a "breezy summer dress" since poly doesn't breathe. I will continue looking for just the perfect fabric. Hopefully I will find it before the summer runs out!