Peasant Shirt Disaster Mostly Averted

Last year I had the idea that I wanted to make some new clothes for all the events leading up to Christmas. In addition to some wardrobe additions to me, I had several Christmas presents to sew for family, a pile of home-made presents to make, a bunch of shopping to do, some work to accomplish... and some adoption paperwork to fill out. SO- I got NO new clothes which was a bummer, but now that the new year is at least slowing down to a managable speed, I have been able to complete some bits and pieces.

First up is a peasant shirt from the July 09 Burda, it is style number 128 and isn't actually shown on a model in the magazine and is a take 1 make 4, so there's no line drawing either. I did read about Selfish Seamstress's version of this top and I should have been warned from that, but I wasn't. And I can't seem to find it on Patternreview.com or on the Selfish Seamstress's blog itself.

So to start with this shirt, here's the line drawing:

From Grillo Originals

So let's get on to the problems with the pattern, shall we? First, the sleeves are drafted WAY TOO FREAKIN' BIG! I made them, then tried shirring the fabric with elastic thread in the bobbin. Then I tried zig zagging over the elastic thread and gathering, then I tried maxing out the stretch of the elastic while I attached it. No dice. The sleeves were still enormous around my wrists. Somewhere the Selfish Seamstress mentioned that she had the same problem, but since I'm built a little more *ahem* sturdily (or chunky) I thought I'd give it a shot as is. Nope, bad decision. I wound up taking about 8 inches out of the ends of the sleeves and I STILL had trouble getting it to gather up enough. My fabric flat out wouldn't gather into as small a circle as would have been necessary and I used light weight drapey fabric! WTF BWOF! Anyway, eventually I got it to a point that was good enough. Here's what that ended up looking like.

From Grillo Originals

Now onto the shoulders. Generally I'm not very critical of the shoulder fit in any pattern because my shoulders are all sorts of wonky so I can't really expect anything to fit well in the shoulders without some major alterations. I do draw the line at sneaking a drop shouldered garment on me though- grrr. If only a model had been wearing this instead of a mannequin. I suppose with the photography I wouldn't have been able to tell much of a difference anyway, but there it is anyway. Drop shoulders annoy me because they constrict movement too much for my taste. Maybe in a sweatshirt or something really stretchy I could handle them, but not in a woven! This shirt is a real trick to get out of for me since I can't just grab the bottom and pull it up over my head because the drop shoulders tie me up about midway up. What a sight! Crazy seamstress trapped in her own project.

And here's a terrible picture of the shirt. Sorry for the phone photo, it was all I had at the moment. My mom thought it looked cute enough, but I don't think this will ever be a real favorite. That's a real shame though because the fabric is nice and the shirring on the bottom of the shirt is nice, but that's about all I can say about it.

From Grillo Originals

Notice that you can't really tell the cuffs are jacked up. They were more comfortable pushed up a little and I liked that look a little better, so that's how they stayed all night.

So I guess the final verdict is that I will probably wear this shirt again. I didn't feel too Becky Home-Ecky when I was out in it and I really do love the fabric. If I were to make it again, I would not start with this pattern. In fact, I would probably just re-draft it myself from some other top or shirt that fits. We'll see how that goes if it ever comes about. Maybe in the spring.