My September white shirt was planned way back in February when Threads presented the Digital Ambassadors with the 2021 Challenge Project. Just a little hint...we were asked to pick a designer to use as inspiration for a garment/ensemble. Stay tuned and once the challenge has been posted on the Threads website, I will share my September white shirt.
For now, I did make an 'almost white shirt' at the end of August. So maybe it can be the "late summer" white shirt. I say 'almost' because it does have a few colorful accents that keeps it from being a totally white shirt.
I started with a square linen (I think, it could be a cotton linen blend) tablecloth with cute little yellow tulips embroidered in the corners. I can't remember where it came from. It could have been another piece from the things I got from my mother-in-law. Or I could have picked it up while trolling around in an antique shop at some point. Regardless, it is probably 1950ish vintage and has a nice open stitched hem around the edges along with the tulips.
I have played around with it forever. I thought about a skirt, I tried several patterns using the tulips in strategic ways as pockets or collars, I even thought about pillow cases at some point. I would pull it out at the beginning of the summer and put it back in the stash in September...until now.....
While I was packing up my sewing room at the end of May I came across several 1940/50ish cotton prints. They were in those wonderful colors that I remember from my grandma's kitchen. Just a bit off primary with pink added in for fun. I was making piles for different quilting friends and I just couldn't figure out where they should go. When I pulled out the tablecloth...again...this year those prints popped right to the front of my mind. The yellows in the prints were perfect with the tulips so I started once again to play around with ideas. It took the whole summer but I finally came up with something that I really like. It ended up being really, really simple and kept the tablecloth mainly intact. Maybe the simplicity is why I like so much. Anyway, I used the prints and the tablecloth and made a "white-ish shirt."
I cut the tablecloth into thirds and used the pieces with the finished edges for the sides/sleeves of my shirt and the middle third for a vee shaped inset to hold them together. I used the cotton quilting prints to bind the cut edges of the 'sleeve' pieces and that's it! No hemming, no fitting, loose and flow-y, perfect for end of summer heat...I love it!
