The Shirt

For this challenge, I decided to ‘re-arrange’ the elements of a shirt – collar, cuffs, buttons, pockets and plackets. The piece is made from scraps of ‘worn and washed’ shirt fabrics, that have been pieced together using raw-edge applique. I added hand-dyed cuffs from an old work shirt, pockets and cuff plackets from old shirts. I drew out collar shapes onto the pieced fabrics, as well as adding a plain fabric collar shape. Since the majority of the pieced background is in blue-ish shades, I wanted to include some colour highlights, so I added a pocket handkerchief, buttons and button-holes in red and I used red to outline the collar shape. I further included a ‘tie’ in commercial fabric and echoed the circular pattern in similar colours as part of the hand-stitched quilting. I echoed the shapes of the collars in machine-stitched lines for part of the quilting and added buttons and more hand quilted circles throughout.

Close up views: