Bamboo Shirts in the Goodwill Style

I found a shirt I really loved the cut of, and then I wore holes through it. I didn’t want to abandon the beautiful horizontal neckline it provided for my wardrobe, so I decided to pick up some stretch knit bamboo/cotton blend fabric and try to replicate the shirt.

I ripped the shirt apart at the seams after a final wash, ironed the sections, and then sketched out the outline of the sleeves and front/back patterns on a stiff paper product used for creating sturdy paper patterns for sewing.

I gave the assembly of the shirt two attempts, learning something from each try.

I had to reverse engineer the order in which these pieces were sewn together, as well as how the shoulder triangles were sewn and reinforced. This was the toughest seam to finish well.

The first time I tried it I accidentally sewed one arm and the back panel inside out, revealing the purled inside of the fabric pattern. Not objectionable aesthetically but not intentional either, so I tried again. You can see the left panel here is rougher looking than the right.

The second time I also narrowed the shoulder triangle reinforcement panel location to bring it higher up on the shoulder, narrowing the width of the neckline so that it didn’t show camisole straps on my shoulders, which the first also did.

I think the third try will be the charm, but I ran out of fabric. I’ll pick this back up again in the future once I wear holes through the two imperfect copies of this shirt.