I first had the idea for this shirt last year and it's taken me until now to actually have the time to finish it. It started with some leftover watermelon fabric from a previous project that I really wanted to use, but I wanted to do something a bit different. My inspo for the patchworking came from this shirt but I wanted to make it a bit more summer-y and casual to fit the fabric.
I decided to use a pattern since it was my first time doing a shirt and wanted to get a more fitted result. I started by getting out all my supplies, including a plain baby blue fabric that I thought would complement the background of the watermelon fabric nicely.
I then went about trying to work out (with some difficulty) which pieces needed to be cut from each fabric type and sometime later I finally put down the scissors (I swear cutting might be my least favourite part of sewing!)
Finally, I got to the sewing stage and started really getting into it. It was quite a bit more difficult than some of the other projects that I've tried in the past but it was a fun challenge, and I got to try out a lot of techniques that I hadn't used before. I will say though that the collar definitely almost killed me! Trying to get the curved yoke to line up with the straight collar was very finicky and spent quite a while pinning and basting. Not to mention the couple of times a breathed a sigh of relief after finishing a seam, only to find that the fabric had folded over and I was sewing through too many layers. Thank god for Jack the Seam Ripper is all I'll say (yes I named my seam ripper).
My shoddy sewing skills aside, I managed to get the shirt all
sewn and actually looking like a shirt, which I was pretty proud of. I was going to just leave it there but then I was inspired by something I saw on Instagram, and decided to embellish the buttons, just because it seemed like a cute detail that would make the shirt a bit more unique. I tested a couple designs before attaching the buttons to the shirt, just sewing embroidery thread through the holes in the button to make little watermelon shapes. The design I ended up going with was two red loops through the top and right holes, two red loops through the top and left holes and two green loops through the left and right holes.
After finally sewing everything together, I gave it a quick iron and it was done! I really like how it turned out, although when I finished with was the start of winter, so I might have to wait a few months to actually wear it. Some of the stitching isn't as neat as it could possibly be, but that was kind of expected, given it was my first shirt. But overall it was a really fun project! Below if a look at the final result.
The song inspo for this piece is of course 'Watermelon Sugar' by Harry Styles, because how could it not be??
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