Harriet’s Libby Shirt
I can definitely see where it gets its name from, the fabric feels luxe next to the skin, but still very breathable in the balmy weather we seem to be having in the UK recently.
Because of the combination of the excitement of the World Cup and the lovely warm weather we’ve been lucky enough to experience recently in the UK, barbecue season appears to have well and truly hit us. I’ve been to a couple so far this month (both for the England games – which I don’t get particularly excited about myself, but I’ll never say no to a barbecue), and already seem to be running low on outfit ideas; which is why a cropped boxy shirt seemed to me to be the perfect make for the peachskin! I recently seem to have developed a real liking for shawl collars and notched collars on shirts – I made one with the blue gingham seersucker from the April SewHayleyJane box in fact, if you’d like to have a look at the sort of thing I mean – so when I saw Sew Over It’s new pattern release, the Libby shirt, I got unnecessarily excited. When I say ‘unnecessarily’ excited, I mean that in the eyes of my mum who isn’t a sewist. In my opinion, my excitement was entirely justified.
The Libby shirt has a lovely loose boxy fit – perfect for hot weather – and is a little bit cropped as well for a nice flattering drape, but would be really simple to lengthen if you did want to tuck it into jeans or trousers which I usually do myself! It also has a button-up front, partial collar stand, notched collar and loosely gathered back; features which all in all, look quite lovely in my opinion. The shirt doesn’t use up too much fabric because the sleeves are grown on and the yoke is unlined, so if you’re usually on the smaller half of the sizing chart, you might be able to get a Libby out of the fabric in the mini box too – especially if you use one or two of your fat quarters for contrasting pieces. The shirt does need a fabric with a fair amount of drape, so the peachskin looks really lovely – and the simple design of the shirt really shows off the print of the fabric too!
Because of the lack of sleeves on the shirt, I found that it seemed to come together quite quickly. It’s a pattern which can definitely be made start-to-finish in a day, especially if you’ve made the pattern up before! I did hit a couple of roadblocks when it came to attaching the collar though, but only because the construction was slightly different to what I was used to and I’d printed off the instructions in black and white rather than in colour, so I did find the demonstrative photos a little bit difficult to understand at times. But it all came together in the end, and it turned out I’d actually done the collar right the first time but gotten myself into a bit of a spiral of ‘no, surely that can’t be right’!
I’m really pleased with the finished shirt, and it’ll definitely have its début at the next barbecue I go to! I”ll be wearing it with shorts rather than jeans though, I just hadn’t found the time to unpack my Summer clothes on the day that I’d taken these photos – it was baking and I definitely regretted not having done that already!