Today I’m posting the last of the things I made in October……in December. I’m a little backed up, what can I say?

This is the Deer and Doe Melilot Shirt made from some mystery slippery fabric I got from Rolls and Rems at Holloway Road. It’s the first Deer and Doe pattern I’ve made and after the brief panic when I thought the instructions only came in French (they don’t, fyi, there is a French booklet and an English one!), the shirt came together pretty well, aside from my terrible fabric choice.

This is some mystery almost-certainly-synthetic slippery horror. It was not easy to cut out accurately and it doesn’t iron at all, it just curls up. I’m frankly amazed the shirt turned out as okay as it did!

You can see above it looks a bit wrinkled, but there’s not much I can do about that given than the iron just makes it worse!

You can’t really see it but there is a pocket! It’s on my left (the right of the photo). I didn’t pattern match it – that would have been impossible! – but the fabric is so busy it disappears in the photos.

I made the size 38 and didn’t make any fitting changes – this is why I like making quite loose-fitting things! I actually think the fit across the back is okay (if you ignore the fact that the fabric looks terrible!). I really like how it sits lower at the back than the front, I think it’s a nice design detail that makes the shirt look a bit more interesting.

I made view A which has long sleeves, a rounded collar and it’s supposed to have hidden buttons. I say supposed to because I clearly did something wrong in the construction because I ended up with the bit that should have folded back over where the buttons would be next to the other part of the button band, so it looks like I’ve got a double button band. I didn’t realise until I’d sewed the entire things together, though. And weirdly the collar seemed to fit okay considering the body of the shirt was longer than it should have been! I just did the button holes down the middle of the 2 bands and it looks okay – no-one has commented on it anyway! (If they did I would just say it was deliberate ;))

I think my favourite thing about this pattern is the adorable collar. I just really like the shape of it and I feel like it’s quite flattering on me too, which is a bonus! I think I’ll try the version with the grandad-style collar too (and the short sleeves) to see if it looks as nice.

I found the instructions pretty clear, though there were a couple of times I found myself googling to see if there was a sewalong (which there isn’t, sob!). I think I mainly psyched myself out about the sleeve plackets because I’d read other blog posts that said the instructions weren’t clear. But actually once I’d worked out which placket went on which sleeve (it wasn’t clear to me which was the back of the sleeve in the diagrams), the instructions were perfectly clear. I think I’ve done this before – notably with the welt pockets on my Freemantle Coat – where I read all the instructions and think ‘what?!’ but then when I actually do the steps, the instructions make sense and it all comes together.

I definitely want to make this again but in a more cooperative fabric! I think this is a good work shirt – it looks equally nice tucked into a skirt (in these photos my navy drill Simplicity 2451) as it does over skinny trousers. I also kind of want to copy the cream sleek one in the pattern photos – and do the button band right so the buttons are actually hidden! In other news I have quite a bit more of this fabric. I’m thinking a skirt lining possibly? Any other suggestions for a pain-in-the-arse-but-pretty-fabric?

 

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