Shrek Shirt

Happenstance found a "terrible in the way that only older screen printed fabric renderings of people can be" bit of woven Shrek yardage in a thrift store.  I didn't buy it, and I mentioned to the kiddo that evening.  He has never seen any of the Shrek movies, but, as a ten year old in 2019, he's all about the memes, so after confirming that he would indeed like to have something sewn from it--even without seeing it--I went back for it the next day.

There was just over a yard, I believe--definitely not enough to make a regular button-up shirt, since it was also absolutely directional.  Also, I wasn't sure if I wanted to put "button up shirt effort" into what might very be a phase that had passed by the time I finally made it?  So I pondered several possibilities for how to make a woven pull-over shirt and finally settled on fusing the general shape of Burda 9419 with the placket insert of Simplicity 1286

I looked at loads of instructions online for how to create and sew partial placket pieces, but my brain completely refused to understand what it was being shown, so I was very happy to rediscover this thrifted Simplicity pattern, which had been shuffled deep into the 'kid' pattern stash because the kiddo is too big for the kid sizes in this, yet still too small for the smallest adult size it offers.  Which, of course, didn't matter when all I needed was the placket guidance.

And a few weekends ago I finally got into working on it, and here it is!

Mostly.



He said at first that thought it would be fine without buttons, then he tried it on and asked for buttons.  My stash of faux tortoise shell buttons served well for this.

but most of the photos I took were from before the button addition.

And you can see what I meant by "terrible in the way that only older screen printed fabric renderings of people can be," right?  Husband thinks the drawings are very horrible--and, actually, the kiddo does too, which makes him like it even more.

  I did slapdash pattern matching on the placket extension--it's not great, but it's good enough.

 Nothing special about the sleeves--because I didn't make the full button-up shirt, I didn't get into the "uh-oh, not quite enough cloth, huh" issue I had when I made the cash shirt, so it was nice to have no issues with the sleeves.  Although, I did make them shorter and omit the cuff, so there might not have been issues, but...this way, there definitely weren't.

I once again pressed up the sleeve edges before attaching them to the bodice, just so I wouldn't have to wrestle the entire shirt around the sleeve press board.  I unfold the edges of the pressed bit, sew the underarm seam, then fold it back along the pressing lines before stitching.  I'm sure other people do that, and I'm sure other people don't consider it right, but here we are.

The sleeves and lower hem were pressed up 5/8", then that was folded inward in half and then they were edge stitched from the inside.

Burda 9419 technically has a back yoke, but the back below the yoke is no wider than the yoke, so I went ahead and fused it to the lower back when cutting things out. (and, yes, I did not pay perfect attention to getting the print straight.  Argh.)  However, since the yoke meets the front forward of the shoulder seam, that does mean there's a bit of upside-down Donkey at the shoulders.

 It's fine.

He wore it to school a few days ago and reports that it was met with great enthusiasm by his fourth grade compatriots.

(oh, and, it wasn't until after I attached the first sleeve that I realized I was accidentally making something that could sorta vaguely be construed as a kurta.)