My Pink Linen Shirt

My first step up to more advanced garment was to try and do a shirt. So I bit on the bullet and decided to try my hand at a Vogue pattern. Once again there is not a great deal of choice when it comes to commercial men’s sewing patterns. In the end I went for V8889. It was a real stretch to make but in the end after lots of troubles along the way I managed to bring it off. It was my first encounter with flat felled seams – some of them made more difficult by being curved. It made me realise the need for accuracy and patience – something I have been working on since!

 

I really like the material; its a rather lovely shade of pink in a Barbados bamboo linen fabric from Acorn Fabrics. I had not come across bamboo linen before; it has the great advantage of being cheaper than standard flax linen and is environmentally more stable to produce which I like. However, it is faithful to ordinary linen fabric in its inability to resist creasing and needs to be copiously ironed before being worn!

The shirt is a pleasure to wear. In terms of quality cut and material it is rather better than the usual off the peg shirts I usually buy. It has a good fit (luckily there was no need to adapt the pattern), not least because of the side panel and the material is beautifully soft and cool.

As it was my first time making a shirt I promptly made up another one to reinforce what I had learnt. This time for my son in a Fife plain azure cotton twill, again from Acorn Fabrics. It indeed worked out rather better.

My Britches

The original well loved pair – c. 1971

It was in the early 70’s, when I was a teenager, that I first got the climbing and mountaineering bug. In those days outdoor shops were relatively few and outdoor clothing much less sophisticated – no Goretex!. However, I purchased a pair of green tweed britches which were quite commonplace then. They served me well over many years in my youth; they were warm, hard wearing and adaptable . However, some 40 years later, with my interest in mountaineering rekindled I tried to buy a new pair – but to no avail: Outdoor shops abound today and are awash with all sorts of sophisticated outdoor trousers made in technical fabrics – but not honest-to-god conventional britches made out of natural tweed.

Putting my first pair of britches though their paces at Red Spider climbing gym.

So I decided to make a modern version of my britches. This was some 6 months ago so it felt like a bit of a challenge having only made a pair of jeans at that point. I am very lucky that Barry Roger’s School of Sewing is based nearby in Southampton. So I signed up to a pattern cutting course and, over a couple of sessions, under the guidance of my tutor Alison I developed a pattern that fitted me well. I made it from a trouser block pattern and made a couple of toiles along the way. Not being confident in my own abilities I thought it would be prudent to make this first pair in a cheaper material than tweed. I bought windproof technical fabric from Pennine Outdoors and went to work. I think it worked out quite well – the britches fitted and looked pretty good in dark navy blue with purple highlights.

My britches in the Himalaya – Kanchenjunga (the third highest mountain in the world) is on the horizon. We got up close to it on our trek.

I tested them at the climbing gym and also on a trip to the Himalaya in November 2016; they survived being washed (well beaten actually)  in a river and being left out overnight at 10,000ft to become frozen rigid! When I returned I made some minor alterations to the pattern; a better design for the insets on the knee band, an overlapped waistband and cut-out knee bands. This time I used the same material but with a black and red colour scheme and completed them just before Christmas.

I am now considering making them finally in tweed…