A bit of nice easy sewing today – or so I thought! Well, okay, the doll dresses weren’t exactly difficult, but good grief they’re fiddly! I know I say this every time I make one, you’d think I’d be used to it by now. The first couple of doll dresses I made for Milly were fastened with velcro. These two fasten with poppers, which I’m hoping she should be able to get the hang of herself. I’d like to make future dresses with buttons, but that depends on whether I can convince myself to work hand-sewn buttonholes on doll’s clothes. (I’m not fighting my sewing machine for it, it’s not worth the swearing.)
The shirt, on the other hand, really was easy. My Dad picked it up in a charity shop, and it wasn’t until he got it home and tried it on that he discovered the sleeves were far too long! There’s no easy way to shorten shirt sleeves (you can do it, but involves taking the cuff off and re-working the placket, which is a pain in the proverbials), so the really easy thing to do is simply to chop the sleeves off at the elbow, hem them neatly, and call it a short sleeved shirt. Much better.
Even though it was only a small refashioning job, the quality of the fabric was very noticeable. The labels are very faded so this shirt’s obviously been washed a lot, and the cotton is densely woven and incredibly soft. It’s an Yves Saint Laurent shirt, so I guess it must have been quite expensive originally. Another reason why I often haunt charity shops – if you can get past all the Primark items being sold for more than they cost new, you can quite often find a piece that might be old, but is of a much higher quality than you might ordinarily be able to afford. Thanks to a very simple alteration, my Dad should get plenty of wear out of this – once the weather warms up enough for summer shirts, that is!