In fashion, the resort collections are the clothing for in-between seasons. In south Texas, a long sleeve cotton shirt is a great answer for our in-between winter and spring seasons! Thanks, Kasey for sharing your resort collection! You can follow Kasey’s sewing and embroidery adventures here.
My Resort Collection is done – an extension of my previous Cruise Collection! It includes a pair of white ankle pants, as well as two button-front “boyfriend” shirts.
The pants are from Lisette’s Butterick pattern 6331, I believe OOP but available at a few online retailers. I was excited to try out this pattern – I’ve wanted to for almost 4 years now. They very closely match a pair of RTW pants I used to have that I loved. The pattern has a yoked back like jeans, so I thought they’d be a cinch to fit.
I was careful to compare the pattern to my own measurements and decided I needed one size up, so I graded it, made a muslin, used Palmer Pletsch’s Pants for Real People book to refine the fit, had a muslin that fit pretty well, so I made them up in my fabric – and had to take 1 5/8 inches off each side seam…??huh??! I don’t know what happened, but I scrapped that muslin and will make another some other time.
In order to salvage the pants, which are made from a white stretch twill from – how many years ago Roz? (5 years ago) – I removed width from the side seams as described above and used an elastic waistband method from the Pants book to manage the now ill-fitting yoke and waistband. Ah well, even when we mess up, we learn! At least I got to use a fun zipper for contrast….
I think the fabric I used was actually a lightweight stretch denim, long since sold out, but there are three white twills currently available which I think would be perfect for this pattern, here, here and here.
The shirts are also a long-awaited project. I started in earnest early in 2022, trying to adjust my ladies’ button front shirt pattern to give the slightly over-sized look I wanted. Then it hit me – just use my boyfriend’s – i.e., my husband’s shirt pattern! (I think Roz got a real chuckle when I had to ask her advice about that…) But I digress… my husband’s altered pattern, Kwik Sew 3422 (OOP) actually fit me pretty well. I only needed about an inch and a half in the bust, so I retraced it and altered it for me.
I left the length, which is more of a tunic on me, and sized the collar and cuffs up a bit so they added to the “oversized” feel. In fact, this is one place where you can go crazy with personalization, the cuffs and collar on a shirt, so I did one with French cuffs. I don’t know how the white-collared shirt came to be – I suspect it’s an imitation of old-style shirts where you could change out the collars and cuffs – but I’ve wanted a white collared shirt in blue and red stripes for years, and now I have them!
These two striped shirtings are sold out, but many more cotton shirting fabrics are available here. I used white sateen for the cuffs and collars. I also made button cuff links for the French cuffs – another fun way to change up your shirt just by using different buttons. I’m now ready for a winter transition into spring!
