A New Shirt for Sherlock

So in reality it is now December. Jeff read through the archives this week and sheepishly came downstairs to tell me that he enjoyed it and he’d really like me to write more. He’s even set it up for RSS, apparently. Therefore, using the magic of publishing dates (break? what break?), I plan to flood his feed. *evil grin*

Fittingly enough, this first post is about him. Er, his clothes. That new shirt for Sherlock we were planning on (which will also be part of the base for Jaime) was ready in time for him to wear to the local ComicCon (marathon-made the night before, of course).

Honestly it’s been so long I’ve almost forgotten the exact details of how I made it…and it doesn’t seem to be in the costume closet, so I can’t check seams. Because I couldn’t possibly go upstairs right now. Nope.

So I started with a big piece of white fabric from my stash – the only one that we felt was really the right texture to translate to Jaime. I’d planned to use the renaissance shirt pattern again, but despite being a lot of fabric, it wasn’t enough fabric. So I draped it.

By which I mean I folded it over itself, cut a T for the neckline, and shoved it over Jeff’s head. (I did ask first!) I made him stick his arms out and pinned the bottom seam of the sleeve in place – with a few adjustments for desired elbow motion. Then we discovered it sat funny at the shoulders, so I ended up cutting the original arms out and shifting the rough outline of the torso lower so I could put in proper shoulder seams.

new-sherlock-shirt
The finished Sherlock look!

I think I did some pretty good 3-D thinking, building a lining into the neckline (which is rounded in back and has a straight line opening
down the center front). By which I mean none of it ended up attached to the “right” side of the fabric. Hooray!

I got to use a massive cheat on the cuffs – they were right on the selvage. And then we cut into them to add cufflinks… If I ever upgrade the piece at all, adding detachable cuffs so it looks more formal for Sherlock is item #1.