Sewing for Men

I recently tested Pickle Toe's Pattern's Men's Taylor Tee.  And I must say sewing for a grown man was a bit of an adjustment.

1. Men's clothes use A LOT more fabric than children's (and even women's). To make this one t-shirt, I used 3 extra large shirts.

2. The seams on men's clothes are LONG. Usually I'm a bit cautious tackling the curves of the armscye, so stitch first, then overlock. Those days are gone! The stretch fabric stitch is soooooooo slow I've now bitten the bullet, and started overlocking straight up. It's so much faster.

3. Grown ups have their own taste, and (generally) don't wear what their mum (or wife) tells them to.  Coupled with this is that most knit fabric ready to hand is either plain, striped, floral or a kid's print.  Which is why I turned to old t-shirts for fabric.

Despite all these hurdles, I did enjoy sewing for a grownup, even if he wasn't too keen on posing for pictures.
On the up-side, the taking of photos was a remarkably simple process.

A matter of
"Stand there"
click
"Look over there"  "Put your hands on your hips"
click
"Turn around so I can see the back"
click
"And we're done"

This was a pretty quick sew (even quicker if you ditch the colour-block). The most frustrating part was having to rethread my machine for the twin needle stitching. But that could be avoided with some forward thinking and use of the overlocker (serger).

There's so much more to this pattern than just this shirt. You can go for a solid tee, rather than colour-blocked. And there's also options for long sleeves, a hood, cuffed sleeves and a waistband. If you have smaller people to sew for, don't forget there are kids sizes (including boy's husky sizes) in the Etsy store.

The pattern is available via etsy here And more tester pics are in an album in the Pickle Toes Patterns group on Facebook.