Virginia, a new member of our Advisors Circle, made up the Verdun Woven T-Shirt in three different fabrics. Here she is to show them to you.
I wanted a casual but also more dressy top to wear with my jeans, and the Verdun Woven T-Shirt was the perfect choice. It is very easy and quick to sew and, as always, the instructions are great.
Given my measurements, I decided to sew a medium and grade to a large at the hips. I wanted to check the fit before sewing it up in nice fabric, so I found a cotton poplin in my stash to use for a practice garment. I found that I had made a mistake when cutting the hem facings, so they didn’t fit. I decided to sew a small double-folded hem, like on the sleeves, and it worked well. While I like the cotton poplin version, it was showing wrinkles across the front due to the stiffness of the fabric.
I decided to try another version in a floral crepe fabric, which was much softer with better drape. From the fit of the previous version, I decided I did not need to grade the hips so I went with a straight size medium. I love this version as it is much more comfortable and sits on my body so much better. However, the fabric doesn’t breathe very well, which is not very comfortable in our Australian summer. It will be lovely to wear when our weather is cooler with a nice cardigan.
For my third version, I found a striped cotton linen blend from Spotlight. I wanted to make sure that I matched the stripes on the most visible part of the shirt, the shoulders. So rather than cut my pattern pieces on the fold, I retraced the pattern pieces to be the full front and back pieces.
I marked the center of the top and bottom of each of the patterns and made sure a blue stripe was running directly down that line. I also drew the blue stripes on the shoulders of my front pattern piece and transferred these to the back pattern pieces so they would match when sewn.
I cut the facing pieces so the stripes would match. It would be obvious if they did not line up in this lightweight fabric. I cut the stripes for the pocket horizontally instead of vertically to add a point of interest to the shirt.
My fabric was a yarn-dyed stripe so it was very easy to see where to match the stripes when pinning. I hand-basted my shoulders before sewing on the machine just to make sure they lined up, and I was very happy with the result.
The stripe matching was the most time-consuming part of sewing this version of the Verdun, but it was definitely worth it. This version is my favourite. This shirt is very comfortable, and I am sure I will be wearing it often during the rest of our summer.
I love this pattern and I am sure I will be sewing many more versions of the Verdun Woven T-Shirt in the future.