Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Anniversary gift

Birthday present

Our fourteenth wedding anniversary is coming up in two weeks so I've decided to sew my husband a proper men's shirt. What am I, crazy? More like over-confident, LOL. I've been altering his shirts for a few years, going so far to shorten the sleeves and redo his cuffs. I know this is a big job because his tailor in Cambridge quoted him $35 per shirt and when I heard that, I insisted I do the work myself. I must have done a pretty good job because when I was up in his closet just now, rifling through his shirts, I couldn't tell which shirts I'd altered. I only figured it out by measuring the sleeves against shirts I haven't gotten to yet.

I'm hoping he'll be pleased. One of his fantasies is having his shirts custom made. I've offered in the past, but he's not very encouraging of my sewing. In our generation, home sewing was on the outs and the only reason why I'm into it is because I grew up wearing beautiful clothes my mother made for me. No one guessed that the smocked dresses and embroidered collars were -sniff- "homemade."

I'm thinking about giving him the finished shirt and not saying anything about making it myself until he tries it on (and, knock wood, loves it!). Then maybe he'll get a clue. And I hope he really does love it because I'm knocking myself out altering the pattern to fit his slim physique! I found a surprisingly nice cotton shirting in 100% cotton at Joann Fabrics last weekend (40 percent off to boot, woo-hoo!), which will look great on him; blue is definitely his color.

Next up is to cut out the pieces in muslin and machine baste them together to get a sense of how it'll all go together. Having a three-dimensional garment to compare to a shirt that fits him well will also help me. I'm thinking about blindfolding him when he gets home and have him try on the muslin, but I'm afraid the blindfold idea will get him thinking about some other kind of birthday present, LOL. (If my mother-in-law is reading this, I'm just kidding. Really!)

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