A pattern mash polo shirt

Why buy new patterns when you can combine a couple of good ones to get exactly what you want (and with no risk of dud sleeves to boot)?!

 

So, I wanted to make a classic polo shirt for P. I had just finished making his Spirograph shirt using the Oliver + S Sketchbook pattern and knew that it fit perfectly and the pattern pieces were still lying around. All I needed was a placket...

Enter the Oliver + S Jump Rope dress pattern. I've made this dress pattern four times now and it's just lovely. The placket instructions are very easy to follow but somehow leave you feeling like you're the genius for sewing such a great looking placket. Of course, this is my contribution to the Oliver + S blog for this month. You can see a bit more by clicking on the link in the image below:

Or just hang around here for more pictures of P!

The fabric for the polo came from Eliza fabrics in Sunshine and I think cost about $5. The collar and placket are leftovers from A's Moschino / Kill Bill suit. As an aside, I had a kid's wardrobe clean out recently and bagged up or gifted quite a lot of handmades. But the Moschino suit is still in the wardrobe. It's a bit short in the sleeves and legs, and so it's no use to us anymore, but I really don't know whether anyone is going to want a hand me down cream suit for a three year old. It's a bit strange, no?

Back to the polo shirt. In my efforts to match stripes, I thought it was correct to align the notches on the sleeve and the notches in the armhole at the same point on the stripe pattern. Obviously not. Is there a trick to getting the sleeve stripes lined up so that they appear to be a continual horizontal stripe with the shirt body?

I'd like to get it right as I have some striped fabric to make myself a Skippy dress, and there'll probably be enough leftover for another polo shirt like this one for P.

But before I tackle anything that requires thought I need a nice, foolproof project. My first attempt at pants for myself ended disastrously and I'm feeling a bit dejected. Somewhere along the way I mucked up such that my pants were about 3" smaller than the waistband. I thought they fit ok, so just chopped the waistband down to fit the pants. So very wrong! (about 3 inches wrong in fact). I don't even have the energy to go back over them to find out where I went wrong. Perhaps next year! :)

Part of my disappointment is that I had mentally planned a very funny, multi location photoshoot for these pants. I'm going to have to revisit the pattern if only for that reason!

I'm not all gloom though. In happier news, I raced my mountain bike a couple of weeks ago and had a win (lack of fitness cancelled out by lack of competition :) ) as well as beating the kids on the train this year. In tragic I-may-never-beat-my-kids-in-another-race-ever-again style I stood on the train platform with my bike over my head as the train pulled in. I may even have thumped my chest or pointed at the kids,...perhaps.

And then, as I gritted my teeth and listened to the dreadful grating noise of my thrice serviced Janome, I received an email saying I'd won a Toyota sewing machine. I didn't even know I was in a competition to win one, but apparently, by having entered the Show I had entered a lucky door prize as well. Bonus!

So the terrible, no good, too small pants were at least sewn on a machine that sounded sweetly happy to be in service.

If you want to see how to make a polo shirt from a girl's dress and a boy's shirt pattern. hop over to the Oliver + S blog. Or if you're curious to see what it looks like when mountain bikers take on a steam train, there are pictures of last year's race here.