kai's shirt

On my weekend hiatus from stole-knitting, I sewed up a shirt for my little guy. I had some really nice plaid shirting left over from a dress I made for Daughter last year - it's almost a seersucker, I guess. Very light and cool to wear. I had enough for another small garment so I made Kai's Shirt from that disaster of a sewing book, Weekend Sewing.

Everything you've read/heard about that book is true. It sucks, unfortunately. The patterns are so, so cute but everything about them is pretty much wrong, from fabric requirements to layout to assembly instructions. As a fairly experienced seamstress I was able to cobble this together but it would be more difficult for a beginner...who uses 1/4" seam allowances for garments? And even that is inconsistent, as the directions switch back and forth from 1/4" to 3/8", and the instructions for hemming the shirt don't work either. You have to kind of know what you are doing. But in the end, you will get a very nice, cute shirt. It's perhaps the best pattern in the whole book. At least the proportions are correct. I made a shirt for myself (also from this book) last year and the sleeves were easily 6" too long.

Yay, one sewing project off the pile! As the weather is about to get too warm for knitting (90? yuck!) I hope to get a few more sewing projects done this weekend.