| AIR DATE | 29th April 2020 |
| CHALLENGE | Made to Measure – Summer Holiday Shirt |
| PATTERN USED | Self drafted and available here |
| MATERIALS USED | Frida’s Garden Tea |
| TIME ALLOWED | 5 Hours |
A new day and a new challenge, time to put behind a poor day one and try to redeem myself on day two. The made to measure challenge was to make a men’s holiday shirt. One of the first things I made when I began sewing was a casual shirt. My friend James, who’s a tailor, drafted the shirt and showed me how to make it. After his excellent tuition, I had made probably about a dozen shirts using this pattern with a variety of materials. We had five hours to make this shirt, and I knew I could make this shirt in about four, so I was pretty confident in this challenge. The shirt, like most holiday shirts, is loose fitting, so I really just had to make sure it wasn’t too tight around the neck, shoulders and chest.
“I Love this fabric” – Esme
The material I chose was from the Alexander Henry collection and was entitled ‘Frida’s Garden’. As a fan of the work of Frida Kahlo I absolutely adored this fabric, and so did Esme, onto a winner there I thought!
The challenge went well, and I perfectly pattern matched my pocket, but this wasn’t mentioned during the judging, maybe it was so well matched that they didn’t see the pocket! Patrick also suggested that it should have a facing on the inside of the shirt front and collar as you could see the reverse of the fabric on the under collar. Fair comment. I should have gone with some more extravagant buttons as I just went for boring white ones, which may have made the shirt stand out a bit. All the same I managed to get through another week. It was a bit of an average week for me, nothing really stood out, if I was going to prosper, I was really going to have to up my game and work harder.
