The Coffee Shirt

Earlier this year, I hit on the idea of making my husband Tim a shirt.

We were out and about at one of the theater events put on by Moisture Festival. He was wearing one of his favorite shirts, a bricky-red silk number. It was tucked in, and in the process of settling into our seats, he pulled it out and the side seam ripped badly.

The damage was pretty bad, and I said to him, well, I could make you another shirt.

Later that weekend, we went down to Pacific Fabrics to see what options were to be had.

As we were perusing the selection of batiks, my eyes fell on a coffee cup print. It was perfect!

I bought the appropriate yardage, as well as a pattern, thread, buttons, and interfacing.

Over the next few weeks, I made the shirt. But it had been a long time since I had made clothing. All went well until I did the buttonholes and buttons.

I thought I was all done, but when Tim tried it on, he said, "Sweetie? The buttons are on the wrong side."

Oops.

I suppose I could have left it that way. But the OCD part of me couldn't let it lie.

I snipped off the buttons, zigzagged the buttonholes shut, and re-sewed them on the correct side.

When the shirt is buttoned up, you really can't see the sewed-up buttonholes. And even if it's unbuttoned, the thread blends in rather well with the fabric print.

So, I got off easy.

And I'm getting ready to do it again, with this really cool fabric based on this iconic image, which we spotted in the window of Esther's Fabrics on Bainbridge Island.

How a Sewing Machine Works

The means by which a sewing machine stitch works has always mystified me. How the bottom thread and the top thread wrap around each other to make a line of stitching.

In the course of doing some image research for a logo project, I came across this simple yet hypnotizing animation.

How did someone conceive of this?

“Coffee” Shirt for Tim

My husband really likes his coffee.

One of his favorite beverages is a double shot of espresso — no milk or sugar, thank you.

Any coffee-related gift is a sure bet. One of the earliest presents I gave to him was an oven mitt made with a coffee-themed fabric. For his birthday a couple months ago, I gave him this.

Over the holidays, I hit on the idea that he needs a coffee-themed shirt. He has a few casual, sort of Hawaiian-style shirts that he likes, and he has a silkscreened T-shirt featuring a coffee design that I gave him a few years ago. A coupon for fabric was burning a hole in my pocket and had to be redeemed by December 31, so we made a trip to Pacific Fabrics.

First we looked at the coffee-print fabrics in the quilting cottons, but they were all a little too "cute-sy" for a guy. Then we perused the batiks. I had pulled out a couple of bolts, when I spotted a batik with coffee cup motifs. Well, that was the obvious choice.

Tim went on his way, and I picked out a pattern, some buttons and thread.

The selection of patterns for men's shirts was pretty limited. Among three catalogs (McCall's, Simplicity, and Kwik Sew) there were just 6 that I considered, out of maybe 10 or 12 different patterns (if that many). I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but it was a big change from the time I made a couple of men's shirts some 20 or so years ago.