Shirt Progress

So I worked a little bit on the rapier shirt for Mike. I previously posted a picture of the blackwork that goes on the cuff. I had wanted to knock out the cassock, but needed him at home to try it on for the collar area so had to work on something else. The shirt was all cut out so I started it a bit. I didn't get very far since I was also helping Ainsley sew on her new little sewing machine ($14, not worth the aggravation) and got tired of bending over so needed a break.

I have used this pattern in the past http://www.houseffg.org/resources/Elizabethan_Shirt.pdf and the shirts really come out nicely, they just have a lot of little parts to put all together. They fit him well and don't require modification to the pattern except a little extra length in the body since his is so tall.


This picture shows the sleeves being attached. I realized at this point that i hadn't cut them wide enough so had to recut sleeves and re attach them. Since the pattern is done by just measurements, i must have cut something wrong in the beginning, thankfully it was an easy fix. Sleeves are just rectangles so didn't require more than 5 minutes to fix it.



I got as far as putting the body completely together as is shown in the picture above. This portion of the pattern is very easy to go together, it's getting all the wrist cuffs and neck cuff with the ruffles that takes the longest and requires some hand sewing to finish it off. I do need to lucet some cord for the neck tie, so will do that during the week before I get back to sewing again. I will post about the lucet cord as well and will try to take pictures of the process.