This is a better format than pattern reviews, I think. I don’t always use the patterns I buy as they are – more often than not, they get modified heavily, even as I go. And I use a lot of self drafted patterns too, which of course are hard to review objectively.

Anyway. On with the post.

Sew Liberated – Stasia tank/tee test run

This started out of the slow death of my stash of admittedly ancient Supré camisoles – I think they might be pushing 8 years now? They’re the kind with the narrow, adjustable straps – which are now unraveling. Three have straps that are no longer attached on one side or the other (and are now cleaning cloths) and the remaining three are only barely hanging in there. And in the intervening years, it turns out that Supré now has very, very few locations near my usual haunts, plus they don’t seem to be doing plain camisoles anymore.

This is a versatile pattern set, though like a lot of Sew Liberated patterns it does run large. I made the tank in size 2, which is two sizes smaller than what my measurements indicate – I wanted a close-fitting tank to go under clothes, but I’d normally only go down one size for that.

A 0.6mm seam allowance can also be a bit awkward give that I’ve yet to see success with only using my overlocker to construct a garment. Instead, I overlocked seams first, then finished with triple straight stitch along the lower edge – it still wasn’t easy though. I think I much prefer sewing first and then overlocking (at least, until I can get hold of a better overlocker).

The hem wasn’t really long enough either – it was very difficult to keep the tank tucked in even before I hemmed it, and if it was hemmed as per instructions I wouldn’t be able to hem it at all. I compensated in the second round by adding 5cm to the bottom hem – with a 2cm turnback, that makes an extra 3cm of length which is enough to tuck in.

On the plus side, the armholes sit nice and high – it wouldn’t take much of an increase in the width of the armhole bands to cover almost all of my underarm and so keep my clothes safe from sweat and deodorant stains. Bands are much more efficient than cap sleeves as well, and easier to fit – but it could be a bit of a challenge to make the bands wide enough at the bottom to cover the underarm, yet not so wide as to show through necklines at the top.

The second tank turned out well enough, so I then made a long-sleeved (well, 3/4 sleeve on the pattern, but long for me) hoodie in cotton loopback. I had an existing hood block that I used.

This was more challenging – I had to work out how to layer the hood and the neckline band in order to get a clean finish to the exposed neckline. I’ll also note that the sleeves are kinda tight in the biceps – but the cotton loopback is pretty forgiving.

My next test run is using silk jersey in a double-layer (it’s white, so it’s going to have to be double layered) to make a properly reversible cap-sleeve t-shirt. We’ll see how I fare.

Buckaroo Bobbins – Western Heritage Shirts (Buckaroo and Light Horseman style)

These are vintage-style patterns – they’re not direct re-prints of actual period patterns as far as I can find, but rather based on the creator’s own research and experience. It’s the first button-down shirt I’ve tried as well, though not the first half-placket shirt (that’s a story for another time). I bought a few Buckaroo Bobbins patterns after quite a while playing Red Dead Redemption 2 – so many of the clothes looked interesting, especially in Red Dead Online, but finding sewing patterns anywhere near those styles and that I could actually buy proved remarkably difficult.

I opted for the modern style front without the pleat – I know how to get it lying smoothly from my last run, even if that method involves a lot of pins, a lot of swearing and a lot of very slow stitching. (It didn’t work out on the toile… probably didn’t use enough pins.) This pattern uses two seperate placket pieces – a long and a short, with the short placket to the inside and the long placket to the outside. This is a bit different to the Henley shirt pattern I first learned this method on, but easier to sew than that one I think. (The topstitching is very messy though. One of these days I’ll get my machine to do it nicely…)

The front shoulder and the back also gets gathered into the yoke, which is… not a look I like. I have a bit of a complex about gathering – partly born out of struggling to do it neatly, partly because it just always looks messy to me (which might be related to the first part, honestly). I’m not even sure if it’s necessarily a historical feature, but I haven’t found anything to contradict it – or to explain the rationale behind it. (I assume it’s to do with fitting, but that still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.)

My model requested the Light Horseman version, which adds an extra ‘bib’ piece to the front (with 13 buttons!). It took me almost an hour of staring at the instructions to realize that the bib is attached solely with the buttons – I thought I was missing a page. That’s how you know you’re too tired and need to leave the rest of it for another day.

The collar was a special hell all of its own. I’ve ended up printing almost 30 pages of extra instructions just on shirt collars, because the toile’s collar turned out so poorly based on the instructions with the pattern. Collar pieces need an instruction page all of their own – it’s not as simple as this pattern made it sound.

And then came the fitting. Yikes.

The pattern needs a ton of alteration. I had already planned to take the excess out of the front shoulder and convert the back to using double knife pleats, but it turned out that despite carefully measuring my model’s neck, the neckline and collar were far too small to ever button. The shoulder is far too wide, resulting in the sleeve seam sitting almost at the bicep. The fit across their front isn’t terrible (it could be better, but it’s no worse than their other store-bought shirts) but there’s an almost ridiculous amount of extra fabric across their back – and yes, my model has a bit of swayback but this was really ridiculous. And somehow, the sleeves were simultaneously too tight in the bicep, but too loose in the forearm.

At this point, I’m debating if I actually try to fix this pattern, or if I turn to a more modern shirt pattern and then add the vintage features (half-length placket, front bib, etc) back in.

I’ll admit, the problems with the pattern combined with my struggle with the collar have burned me out a bit on wovens for a while. But with summer coming, I have pants to make, so… maybe I’ll get my mojo back that way.