Cashmerette Harrison

 A short while ago, out of the blue, I found a job posting that sounded really interesting.  Whilst I didn't have all the qualifications they were looking for I decided to apply for the job anyway.  Amazingly enough I actually got an interview!

As soon as I stopped squealing, my mind turned to  - what am I going to wear?   I had my new pair of black Cashmerette Calder pants for the bottom half, but I needed a suitable top to go with it.  The obvious answer was the Cashmerette Harrison shirt - the best fitting button up shirt pattern for a large busted woman.  Plus I've already done most of the fitting for it so it should be a nice easy make.

Next I needed fabric.  I trolled through my stash and came upon a polyester satin fabric I bought in January as a contender for my Pattern Review Sewing Bee round 4 interview outfit.  I never used it as I found something even better in my stash but I figured it would work nicely for this project.  It is beautifully bright a white background with green leaves and colourful leaves printed all over it.

My pattern needed just a few tweaks before I could get started.  First up one of the pattern pieces for the sleeve placket was missing - However, since I didn't like the two piece sleeve placket, I just redrafted it into a single piece sleeve placket.  As for fitting I tried on my previous Harrison to see what modifications were needed.  First up was the shoulder - I  noticed that the shoulder seam was where it should be at the neck edge, but way too far back at the sleeve edge.  I compared my pattern piece to my sloper and sure enough a 1" forward shoulder adjustment was required.  The shoulder seams sits much more nicely now! 

 The only other modification I made to my pattern was to take about 3/8" width out of the center front piece at the arm hole.  I found that the arm scythe was just a tad wide at this point on my previous version.  Looking much nicer now.

With my pattern modified I got to cutting and sewing.  I cut out each piece with an additional 1/8" added to most seam allowances so that I could sew French seams.  Probably not the best idea on those princess seams, they're not the flattest seams I've ever sewn but at least it looks pretty on the inside and with the pattern on this fabric you really can't see the puckering in the seams.

The sew was all going swimmingly till I put my sleeve in. Now on my original Harrison the sleeve sat beautifully - it sits perfectly straight down my arm with no wrinkling what so ever.  But when I basted in my sleeve to check fit, I now have wrinkles galore (and yes I moved the shoulder notch based on the new shoulder position so it wasn't that.  I can only assume its due to the lightweight nature of my fabric this time around. 

I spent quite a bit of time playing around with the sleeve trying to get it to sit nicely.  At one stage I thought I had figured it out.  I cut a muslin sleeve out of another woven I had lying around and it sat perfectly, but once again it was a heavy weight woven and when I modified my sleeve to this new pattern and basted it in I still had wrinkles in my sleeve.  At this point I said close enough.  I'd buy any shirt that fitted as well as this one does without hesitation - so I went ahead and finished up my shirt.

When cutting out I made no attempt at pattern matching.  For most of the shirt you really can't tell, the pattern is so all over the place it's not a problem.  But I did get some twinning on the back as you can see here.

The last step on the shirt was the buttons.  I realised that I don't have any buttons in stash that would work - and I hate buttons and button holes anyway - so once again I went with plastic snaps.  My green snaps matched really well with the fabric print.  

Whilst I'll probably only wear this shirt once it's a great make - And I really do love the fit of this pattern - and with only a few modifications from the printed pattern.

So my final Cashmerette outfit.  Harrison shirt and Calder pants.