INSIDE OUT? My New Reverse-print Hawaiian-style Shirt!

Friends, I'd had roughly three yards of a super-saturated Alexander Henry hibiscus print (quilting cotton) in my stash for a while now.

I purchased it deeply discounted ($3 a yard) at It's a Material World, the forever-going-out-of-business fabric store on 39th St.  The store is a mess but I've found some wonderful things there and it has been on my fabric-shopping circuit for the last nine (9!) years.  If they ever really do go out of business, and it's inevitable given the direction things are going on that street (with both Chic and Steinlauf & Stoller moving to other locations and Paron's closing entirely), I'll miss them a lot.

I don't know what I thought I'd make with this fabric: it's really too orange-red and vibrant for my coloring.  But after making a series of quilting cotton shirts these last few weeks I was on a roll, so I decided to make yet another shirt, this time for myself.

I opted to use the wrong side of the fabric on the outside of the shirt. Evidently this is a tradition with Hawaiian shirts, and I've used this technique once before in a pair of tractor shirts I made a couple of summers ago.

I cut my left and right fronts without any attempt at matching the pattern across the front, but after looking at the two sides, I decided the design really wanted to be matched across the front, so I recut the right side.  I could have left it as-is too.  But since this wasn't going to have an applied button placket down the front, there wasn't going to be anything breaking up the pattern; it's less visually jarring to have the pattern match, don't you think so?

I used Vogue 8889 (below) to make this shirt.  This is a fitted men's shirt pattern with a covered-button placket.  I'm not sure it's still in print but it's not hard to find online from various sellers on eBay and Etsy.  I've used it a few times over the years.  It has side front and side back pieces for shaping so there are a lot of seams to sew.  On my latest version I simply sewed the seam, serged the raw seam allowance, pressed the allowance to one side, and topstitched from the front, creating a faux flat-felled seam.  Nobody will ever know the difference and it's an ideal technique, especially on quilting cotton.  It's much faster too.

I had a good contrast fabric, also an Alexander Henry print, which I found at the Chelsea Flea Market.  I used it for the inside yoke and inside collar stand.

And here's the finished shirt.  I like it!

I think I'm done making summer shirts for this year.  It does feel good to sew from my stash and make room for new stuff--and there's always new stuff, right?

BTW, MPB Day is just three weeks away, so if you intend to come and haven't yet RSVP'd, please do so (instructions in the original post).  I hope you can make it.

Have a great day, everybody!