SAM #4

Sweet Liberty!

Shirt-A-Month #4 is Sewing Workshop’s Liberty. It’s also the overlayer part of my spring 6-pak, and can be worn as a jacket over either of the previous matchy-matchy columns. Way to make one garment count towards multiple goals, right?

The skinny (I wish) on this Liberty: The double-sided linen was purchased a long time ago from Fashion Fabrics Club. It was a clear must-have for me. One side matches my eyes and the other side matches my hair. Someone doing historical reinactments could have done the whole Civil War with this fabric if they had had enough. One side for the Union, the other side for the Confederacy. Anyway, the fabric was very special for me and I dithered for years over what to do with it. One pattern after another was considered and cast aside. Finally I decided I wanted to make the Liberty with hems and facings turned to the outside. The irony here is that you could absolutely make the same effect with two contrasting fabrics. The only place the double-sided characteristic of the fabric was utilized was the hems, and you could easily cut a hem facing in your contrast.

Other changes from the pattern: lengthened an inch. I have made this before and did

not really care for the wavy collar in the pattern, so this time I cut a straight band. Also, the instructions call for french seams. Since this linen is pretty heavy, that was not the way to go. Instead, I pressed the seam allowances open and then turned them under, using a triple stitch topstitch on either side of the seam to secure.

This is the way it looks from the outside.

And this is the way it looks on the inside.I’ve only used decorative stitches on my machine a very, very few times. The idea for using the triple topstitch came directly from Carolyn of Diary of a Sewing Fanatic fame.

There must be something about the Liberty that makes me want to use the decorative stitches, though. My previous version (also linen) used a wing-needle and hemstitching along the hem and facing edges.

 

This is a very fun pattern to make, and not difficult, but it is so distinctive that I may not make it again. But I see that an Eskandar design (at Nieman’s) seems to have a similar hem/vent in a longer length. That might just be different enough to give the pattern a third whirl.