Isn’t it great when the simplest of tweaks can bring a rather boring garment bang up to date? I’ve been loving this season’s contrast collars and button bands, so thought I’d try out an idea that’s been niggling me for weeks. I bought this shirt from, yes you guessed it, a charity shop. It cost me the princely sum of £1.75. It’s a really good quality shirt but needed a little bit of “modernising”…
There were alot of buttons down the front of this shirt. One continuous line of them, with only a few of them being actually “functional. The rest were simply stitched onto the placket, in the gaps between the buttonholes, for decorative effect. Now I like buttons as much as the next stitcher, but this was just overkill. I removed all the buttons and used contrasting black ones instead, and went for a double button effect.
I reshaped the collar from pointy to Peter Pan and finished with contrast black bias binding. I’ll be sharing a “How To” on the reshaping technique tomorrow, so check back for that if you fancy giving this a go 🙂 COLLAR TUTORIAL HERE
I’m not quite finished with this shirt yet. I can’t quite decide what to do with the sleeves (if anything) and I need to take it in a teensy bit. But I was so pleased with how this stage of the transformation has turned out, that I thought I’d share it early! What say you about the sleeves? Leave well alone or change ’em up a bit? I was thinking 3/4 length but I’d have to lose the cuff as it doesn’t fit around that part of my arm. Hmmm, maybe make a new black cuff?? Decisions, decisions! Of course, what I really ought to be doing is cracking on with Christmas sewing…
