I Make Shirts

I have a passion for making tropical holiday shirts.

Ever year in January I would go on holiday to Key West. A local KW woman made shirts – Hawaiian style, full of tropical patterns and loaded with colour. I love colour. I bought one every year I went down there.
Then, she retired from the business. I bemoaned I would no longer get shirts.
A couple of friends, who have a knack for clothes and sewing, said ‘well, make your own shirts”. I pointed out that the closest I ever got to sewing was closing sutures while in the ER rotation in residency. They pointed out that if junior high school girls can figure out a pattern, so could I. Some what out of spite (“I’ll show them!) and somewhat out of challenge, I gave it a try.
I have never touched a sewing machine, or seen a pattern. Turns out sewing has its own lingo; I started with that. I got out a simple men’s tropical shirt pattern, 2 ½ yards of a ‘trial’ fabric, and gave it a try.
The first shirt was rather crude and not very well made, but I was pleased with my effort.
That was a few years and 3 dozen shirts ago. I have improved by trial and error and practice. Most shirts I gave to my friends (one year, when we all gathered in Key West, they did me the honor of wearing these shirts). I have made a dozen or so for myself.
The photo above is one of my favorites. It is a navy blue shirt whose yoke is made from scraps of all my other shirts made up to that point. It is a sort of encyclopedia of my labors. Each bit of the yoke has a memory to it. From time to time I think I will post my creations
Here is "Jungle green".