Deer and Doe Melilot

This project started with the fabric, which is one of the new Minerva print on demand bases, the olive rice stripe dobby. It's made from the waste involved in olive oil production mixed with cotton. The white stripes (the rice stripes of the name) are woven in and out and are not part of the print.

I really like this fabric. It's light weight (100gsm) and fairly slinky, but not as slinky and easy to pull out of shape as say a viscose of that weight. And it presses really well. It's also not shiny. The one thing that does make it slightly difficult is that fibres pull out easily out of the stripes. I ended up just snipping them off where that happened and that seems to have caused no issues (I've washed it once so far)

Anyway, because I wasn't sure what to expect of this fabric, I hadn't decided on a pattern. In the end I went for the Melilot by Deer and Doe, which I've been meaning to try for a while. Fun fact, Melilot is clover in French! I've made a few shirts recently, but they've been straight up and down shacket styles, and I wanted to try something with darts and some shaping that could sit closer to the body.

I did view A, the full length placket sleeves with the full collar. I decided on the size based on my bust which put me between a 42 and 44, I went for the 44 without really looking at any of the other measurements. I probably should have but it's worked out fine and I'm happy with the amount of ease. I didn't make any adjustments, and I don't think I will need to if I make another either

I did follow the instructions, I ended up having to read them quite a few times but I can't say what the issue was, just my brain. I'm always apprehensive about plackets, but found this one fine, maybe in getting better! I found positioning the buttonholes correctly white hard, since the band with that is very narrow and the fabric is black. I also did a few trial ones with the direction of the hole running at 90 degrees to the fabric grain, and that basically did not work at all, the white stripes just got pulled out and messed up the process. So that's something worth bearing in mind! It worked fine when putting the buttonholes vertically down though, which I kind of needed to do because the band is so narrow

That's all from me on this, super happy with my shirt and hope to make a view B as well, it needs just 1.2metres of 140cm fabric, so I'm hoping I can find some in my stash!

Pattern: Deer and Doe Melilot 

Fabric: 2 metres of Minerva print on demand olive rice stripe dobby in the 'going places' print 

Size: 44

Adjustments: none