…as in wheat coloured. I made this shirt for Mark for Christmas but struggled to make it fit my alphabet theme – I was rather pleased to think of the title, to be honest.

The contrast on the shirt is a piece of remnant that we bought in Queenstown, NZ, in March and I have hunted for some fabric to go with it ever since. I was initially looking for a piece of linen, but that proved impossible. In the end I bought the wheat coloured fabric in Tessuti, Sydney. Of course I didn’t realise that it was 114cm wide instead of 150cm, so getting the shirt out of it was interesting. I had to cut each piece out separately and thanked my lucky stars that I had the contrast fabric.

I’ve had this shirt planned for some time, then went to Melbourne recently where I was having dinner with a colleague and he was wearing the most amazing shirt with two collars. Forget talking shop – we talked shirts! He buys his shirts in London and they all have contrasting bits and fancy collars. This one had two, but he has shirts with three collars. I immediately decided to go down the two collar route, but didn’t really take enough notice of things such as interfacing weight, etc, and it is a tad rude to start feeling a man’s shirt when he is a virtual stranger.

The other interesting detail was the piping effect down the front button placket. I thought I could manage this as well. I have to note here that I am full of good ideas but am somewhat lacking in the execution. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I cut out the extra collar (made slightly bigger) and got stitching. I was concerned about the bulk and also how to make it all even. I fiddled around and fretted about the double collar, thinking that it would probably be easier to wear with only one.

I slept on the issue and decided to remove the collar. This involved major reconstruction meaning that I missed the Christmas morning deadline, but I figured that it would be better to get it right.

Yes, I think this is better.

I bought buttons for this shirt when I was in Sydney but couldn’t find them – obviously buried deep in my stash, so I used some buttons that I had bought at the Fabric Cave. I bought quite a few of these as I thought they would be useful and they are a pretty good match for this shirt. I don’t think they are vintage, but they are interesting.

Mark was able to wear the shirt to Cavalia, the tickets for which we received from Tom and Bridgette for Christmas.

The details:

Pattern is KwikSew 3422

Fabric came from Tessuti, Sydney (main) and Fabric Store, Queenstown (contrast)

Buttons are from the Fabric Cave