Purple and Teal linen shirt

In September last year I entered the Sewing Bee contest on Pattern Review.  For the very first round the challenge was to make a pair of shorts.  The shorts that I entered into the competition  (shown in the pictures above) are one of the best fitting pair of shorts that I own, but the'ye are not easy to wear.

The problem is that they have a strong bright coloured pattern on them......and all of my summer T shirts also have a strong bright coloured patterns on them so finding something to match is impossible.  So what's the answer? make a new shirt of course.

I headed to my fabric stash to see what suitable material I have....not a lot.  Most of my knit material is either brightly coloured and patterned, black or grey and none of those were going to work, so I expanded my search a bit and unearthed some beautiful purple linen material that I originally bought to make cushion covers out of ( I also used some of the leftovers to make L a pair of shorts).  I really only had scover srappy bits left o I wasn't too surprised when halfway through cutting out the shirt I found out I didn't have enough material for the second sleeve.  I contemplated putting a seam down the middle of the sleeve, but after much deliberation I decided to do a bit of colour blocking (see I just cant stay away from colour) and use a piece of the corresponding teal linen to make the sleeves instead.

The pattern? -  I started off with New Look 6704 that I used to make this purple and turquoise  shirt last year.  I did a lot of work at the time trying to figure out what size to use - grading between sizes etc but in the end  the fit of the shirt was not quite right.  It was just a bit too non fitted for my tastes.  (Having said that it did get a lot of wear last summer cause I love the material and it's a very comfortable shirt to wear)

I have however been playing around with another princess seam pattern lately.     The pattern for my black and grey raglan shirt  which I then modified for my rash vest .  I figured if I could combine the two patterns I might have something that worked.

So I traced the main pattern pieces from the New Look 6704 pattern onto some easel paper that I use for pattern drafting.  I then took my pattern pieces for the grey and black raglan and overlaid them.  I decided to skip the yoke from the New Look pattern and instead use the raglan pattern around the shoulder 

Now when I go back and look at it the only things I really took from the New Look pattern were the  the shaping for the front neckline and the sleeve and the addition of the collar and button band.

When it came to adding the button band and collar I decided that with the new neckline due to the raglan sleeve I could just combine the two, which resulted in a very baseball shirt kind of look that I really quite like.

As per usual I put on plastic snaps rather than try and do buttons.  Can I just say I love my snap press!  I also serged and then top stitched all the seams in light purple thread.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this pattern, it  still need a little tweaking around the waistline - there is still some pooling under my bust - and neckline doesn't lie perfectly flat, but otherwise its pretty good. 

However I'm not entirely convinced that I will wear this top, though I'm not sure why?  I'm heading back to Australia next month and am trying to figure out what clothes to take.  The plan was to take this shirt to go with my shorts, but as I'm not entirely convinced that I'm going to wear it, I'm not sure I want to lug it all the way just to find out that I don't.

That being said I did wear it the other day with my black and white pants and loved the look, so I'm sure it will get some wear.