I’ve spent the last few evenings beavering away in my sewing room making myself a shirt, I’ve wanted a traditional shirt pattern for a while, but it’s taken me until now to find the right one…it’s got a back yoke, two piece collar, two piece sleeves with a button tab, front button band, shaped hem….a proper shirt, it’s McCalls 6613

I’ve got some beautiful fine cotton lawn waiting for such a pattern, but I decided to try it out first on some material I didn’t feel quite so precious about, so I’ve used another fine cotton with a self stripe and pattern in it, the sort of thing men’s dress shirts are made in!

The pattern went together really well, it’s one of those perfect fit ones, I must admit the only alteration I made was to move up a size over the hips (to accommodate my big bum!) so I cut out a small with medium hips. The instructions were very clear and easy to follow, I decided to French seam where possible to get a neater finish, so the side seams and one of the arm seams were stitched in this way. I would have liked to have French-seamed both arm seams but the cuff opening was made out of one and I couldn’t see how to stitch the opening flat and then French seam above.

I took a lot of care whilst cutting out and stitching to get it as neat as possible, matching stripes and precision edge-stitching! I’ve been watching the Great British Sewing Bee, we’ve got week 4 tomorrow, so I was imagining May and Patrick looking over my shoulder, hoping they approved! I found a distinct disadvantage in my OH deciding to watch it with me, I now get comments along the lines of ‘well it only takes them 6 hours on the Sewing Bee!!’

I bought the buttons in Leeds market, they came in two sizes so I could use smaller ones for the collar and the button tabs. I actually stitched them on upside-down as it was a cleaner white. I’m not convinced I’ve got the collar buttons quite in the right place but I’ll wear it to check before I move them.

I’ll definitely use this pattern again, it fit’s fine, it went together well and it had all the design elements I wanted. Success!!