Button Cowl Shirt

 First up I just want to say that I love this shirt so much, the fabric, the fit, the design everything.

The idea for this shirt probably had its conception in the blog post from Cashmerette on doing a patchwork sweater hack.  I loved the way they had used a patchwork of leftovers to make a stunning new garment.  I've done this before - my Birthday Isolation sweater  was the latest - and I loved the finished product - so I figured I'd try it again.  I had a rummage through the set of drawers I have of offcuts - All those pieces of fabric that I have that are left over at the end of a project - they are not quite big enough for another project, but not small enough to throw out and found all my sweater knit type materials.  Then I played around with combinations of different fabrics to see what went together.

 I found this zebra print with blue highlights - left over from my Keilo dress.  Also this blue with black geometric designs sweater knit that I used for leggings.  I thought that these would go nicely together, but needed something else to make it cohesive - plus I needed more fabric so I pulled out a left over piece of black knit fabric as well.  This fabric is not a sweater knit, but the weight was about right to go with the other two pieces.  I have no idea what I used the rest of this material on - but it's all gone now.

Now that I had three coordinating fabrics I had to figure out how to put them together.  I sat down with some coloured pencils and my croquis to try and figure it out.  During this time This post from Shwin & Shwin popped up in my bloglovin' feed.  It's a tutorial for a button cowl neck that can be applied to really any raglan pattern.  It looked very similar to the Cashmerette Tobin sweater that I've been wanting to make ever since the pattern was released. I decided I would give it a go.  What I really like about his design is the angle on that collar.  I decided to play that up and place my different fabrics on a diagonal.

Since this design uses a raglan sleeve pattern I started with  my basic raglan sleeve T shirt pattern that I used most recently here.    I traced the pattern pieces out again, this time removing the fold and creating full pattern pieces for front and back.  I then did a little modification to straighten up the side seams a bit -  I removed 1" of the width of the pattern on each side at the back and moved it to the front pattern piece. I also turned it back into a crew neck rather than a V neck   Once I had my pattern drawn up I started sketching in some diagonals - I settled on rectangles 6.5" wide x 9" long and drew them onto my pattern.  I was originally just going to cut the rectangles and make the fabric then cut the pattern pieces out of the fabric, but when I went back and looked at my offcuts I realised I didn't have enough fabric to do that.  So instead I drew in my lines on my pattern and cut the pattern up.  This meant there were a bunch of smaller pattern pieces that I could squish in .

I tried to keep the grain of the fabric going the right direction for each piece - and for the zebra print and black fabrics that was fine, but I really only had small scraps of the blue and black and it took some real finagling to get all my pieces cut out and I had to totally ignore the grain.  In the end I had to resort to cutting my sleeve piece in half and piecing it back together to get them all cut out - oh well a few more seams isn't going to hurt this project.

Once I had all my little pieces cut out I started putting them all together.  Each seam was basted on the sewing machine then finished on the serger.  I made the front, back and sleeves and basted the shirt together and then it was time to figure out the collar.  

I measured my neckline 24.5" and then had to decide how tall I wanted my cowl.  I knew I wanted it pretty big and randomly chose 10".  I then had to find enough fabric to cut out strips of 10" tall fabric.  I didn't worry about keeping them all the same width, just cut them as large as I could.  Again I had to piece together small pieces of the blue/black as most of my scraps were triangles by this stage, but I finally managed to get enough strips to alternate black, patterned, black, patterned, across both the inside and outside of the cowl.  

I sewed all my strips together, added 1.25" strips of interfacing at the front and back edges of  both the inside and outside, then sewed the inside and outside together down both sides and across the top and turned it right side out. 

Next up was the placket.  I was all out of blue and the zebra is a much more drapey fabric, so I decided to use the black fabric for the placket.  based on the tutorial I needed a strip 4" wide for the placket and 2" wide for the facing.  The length was determined based on the longest scrap I could find that was 4" wide - it ended up 4.5" long.

 

The tutorial walked through how to add the facing and placket and I followed that without any issues, same for adding the collar.  I used wonder tape when it came to top stitching the underside of the collar down just to make life a little easier. 

I then added snaps to close the placket - I decided on the plain black snaps and put them 1.5" apart right along the placket and up the edge of the collar.

       

Then I just needed to finish the sleeves and bottom.  I decided to use a plain black ribbing I have in stash - an easy and neat finish. 

I tried my new shirt/sweater on and instantly loved it....but there was just one minor issue.  With the big cowl/collar my chest and neck were nice and warm, but my arms - not so much.  I always seem to feel the cold most in my arms. So I decided to try and line the sleeves.  I went back to my fabric off cuts drawer and found a fabric that really didn't match with the rest of my stash.  A sweater knit in shades on pink and brown.  I figured that it was going to be hard to make anything else out of that and decided it would make a perfect lining.  I stuck my pattern pieces back together and had just enough fabric to get two sleeves cut out - assuming I could ignore the grainline again - oh well.  To attach them I sewed up the length of the sleeve, then attached it around the cuff,  I sandwiched the cuff between the main sleeve and the lining and sewed it together so that when the lining was turned back the seam was all nicely covered.

 

I pulled the sleeve up the inside and then turned under and hand stitched the raglan seams to the seam allowance of the main shirt.  This makes it really neat inside.

And NOW I had a fantastic shirt.  I love the colours and the placement of the fabrics. I love the cowl. and I love that it's warm and snuggly.

The one and only issue that I have is across the shoulders at the back.  It seems to be just a smidge too snug across the shoulders - you can see some drag lines in the photo below.  I think that it's got to do with the seam line at the top of the sleeve.  The seam reduces the amount of stretch in the fabric around the arm and it's just a touch too tight.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the wrinkles are just from contorting my arm around to point the remote at the camera - always a problem I have with back photos.

Now onto my next patchwork shirt - I have another three fabrics that will work together, but the sketch I've come up with is awfully 80's looking. I may have to rethink my fabric placement.