The Blue Peter Shirt

So, you remember that $1 piece of fabric I bought last week?

Well here it is made up:

What do you think? Is that a bargain, or what? I've called it the Blue Peter Shirt, purely because the colours remind me of the BBC's Blue Peter show badges, a tenuous connection because no ships are included in the fabric pattern and the blue is rather darker and … well anyway, I just like the name. Do you know that show has been running since 1958? Does that make it the longest running TV show of all time? Okay, getting back to the shirt …

I used the same pattern that I used for the Touch of the Orient shirt, Simplicity No 6410 (1985), with a few modifications.

I really like the collar on View 4 and I decided to do the pin tucks this time and alter the hemline to curve up to the side seam in the front and down to an exaggerated shirt-tail at the back.

I added some shape to the back with princess-style darts.

I'm a three-quarter sleeve girl so I added to the sleeve length and pleated it into a cuff (hard to see in this photo because of the fabric pattern).

Finishing a curve is always problematic. Turning up a narrow edge is fraught with difficulty and can curl up when finished, using a binding is not appropriate for this application and neither is an overlocked edge. 

My solution was to add a facing of lawn and then topstitch around the entire perimeter of the shirt. I couldn't be happier with the result. 

The curves are perfect and the facing adds a little body to the shirt-tail, hopefully preventing it from curling up when worn.

My first thought was for white buttons (boring) then these lovely mulberry-coloured ones caught my eye. They are from my mother's button collection and date from the 1940s I'd guess.

As it's winter in Australia and today's temperature in Melbourne is forecast to be around 13 degrees Celsius (brrrr), I may not get to wear my Blue Peter shirt for another few months.