Sunday Sew-Day: Father's Day

In honor of today's holiday, I thought I would do a little refashion using a men's dress shirt, specifically, this blue gingham Van Heusen shirt that I got for free in a box of someone else's garage sale leftovers. It had a few very faint stains down the button band, so I knew I wanted to turn it around and put them in a less obvious spot.

I also knew I didn't want this to be just another men's shirt refashion. So I grabbed this lace tee, another shining example of a previous refashion that turned out to be less than practical. I just don't like to layer in warm weather. But just look at that lace!

First, I used an existing well-fitting top to cut out my new front and back pieces.

Then I cut the sleeves and torso off the lace tee. They'll be saved for another day since I'm only going to use the lace yoke for today's remake.

For the back panel (formerly the front of the men's shirt), I cut just below the pocket. For the front (formerly the back), I cut a little higher straight across the middle, then curved downward toward the bottom of the armholes. I did this with my fabric folded in half to make sure the sides were symmetric. These curves on the side, when attached to the straight edge of the lace yoke, will act a bust darts of a sort.

To join the lace and gingham, I lined up the back panels with right sides together and with the lace hanging over by about 1/4 inch. Once that I was sewn, I folded the lace over the gingham, then folded them both downward again to hide the raw edges.

Once that was top-stitched, the seam had a nice, finished look. The front lace and gingham panels were attached to one another in exactly the same way.

The side seams were sewn with wrong sides together and as close to the edge as possible, about 3/16 inches is what I managed.

Then the shirt was turned wrong side out, the seams pressed and sewn again about 1/4 inch from the fold. Again, the raw edges are now nicely encased so I don't need to worry about fraying fabric.

To finished the armhole edges, I cut bias strips from the trimmed-off yoke portion of the front gingham panel. Then I joined the strips end-to-end to make my own matching bias tape.

I pinned my tape around the right side edges of my armholes. Once it was sewn, I pressed the tape outward, then folded it around toward the inside and pinned and sewed again.

Lastly, I gave my bindings one final press.

All finished!

I'm contemplating cutting off the original lace collar and using some of the leftover bias tape to make it match the armholes. What do you think?