Lengthening The Lounge Shirt

This oversized print deserved an oversized shape to do it justice. It is a luxurious printed pure silk from Italy and only available from M Rosenberg and Son

The Lounge Shirt with its wide body shape was the perfect place to start. Once I lay the pattern pieces on the fabric I decided to lengthen the body to balance out the print. It then occurred to me that curved hems would work particularly well.

These are the pattern alterations I made. I marked a point 35cm down from the underarm following the original pattern piece then drew an additional line 16 cm below the baseline of the shirt. I then drew a curve as shown above. I did the same for the back as front. The shape of the curve is the same as the curve on the Gathered Summer Top pattern available in the Summer 22 magazine.

The only other alteration was to tighten the cuff as shown in this Journal post.

I finished the curved hem with self-fabric bias binding. I find self-fabric bias binding much better to work with than most bought bias bindings, Claire Tyler provided instructions for a continuous bias binding technique in the Autumn 22 magazine.

This variation required an extra metre of fabric to the amount given on the pattern.