A classic shirt to cleanse the sewing palate

I didn’t get round to posting about sewing in 2022, and now it's 2023! It's hard to believe that it will soon be a decade since I started this little blog and that I've been feeding my corner of the internet with posts read mostly by my Mum ever since. Blogging is pretty retro these days, and it's easy to be nostalgic for the early days of the 'blogosphere' and lament the way social media killed it off, but nothing stays the same forever! It makes me happy to look back at the early posts on my blog and see how excited younger me was about sewing and writing about it. It's nice to have an archive of sewing projects that remind you both of the project itself as well as what was happening in your life at that time, both good and bad.

But, regardons vers l'avenir ! It's time to catch up on some recent projects, starting with this shirt I made at the end of 2022. I recently discovered the Modern Sewing Company and I was immediately drawn to their patterns, in particular the Classic Shirt pattern as I had been in the market for a new shirt pattern for a while. 10 years ago if you were sewing and active on the internet then you probably knew all the main indie pattern companies. Nowadays I’m always discovering an endless amount of new (to me) companies and I think it would be impossible to sew your way through everything on offer! It’s amazing to see how the home sewing industry has grown over the last decade. 

And the Classic Shirt pattern didn’t disappoint! I made a cropped version with short sleeves to test out the fit and I love wearing it so much, looking forward to warmer days to get more wear out of it.

The grey fabric is the last of some fabric I’ve used a lot over the years, and the sleeves, back, and collar are cut from a piece of fabric that I think was a small table cloth or tea towel, found in the fleamarket. I love the way the two fabrics look together, and eeking out the pattern pieces from these fabric scraps was a nice challenge.

I’ve made several shirts before, both from patterns I've bought and some self-drafted attempts, but it was really nice to just start from scratch and follow the well-written instructions for a new pattern. The fit is really great and I can’t wait to make more versions.