Monday 13 May 2013

The Sushi Chef Shirt

First, a big 'thank-you!' to Clare at Sew Dixie Lou and Emma at My Oh Sew Vintage Life for giving me a Liebster award - a response post to follow soon!

 I'm very lucky in that Mr Needles loves cooking; most evenings I come home to a new feast, often inspired by south east Asian cuisine, interspersed with quite a few good burgers. He spends hours watching testosterone fuelled cooking programs, usually involving fire, knives, and shouting, then goes crazy in the kitchen chopping, marinading, and generally cooking up a storm!

It was one of these programs that inspired him to ask for sushi chef-inspired shirt. On a recent trip to Abakhans in Manchester, he even joined in with the rummaging and found an Alexander Henry offcut which was a bit Japanese-y. (I could see I wasn't getting out of this...) I traced a pattern based on one of his favourite shirts, added in some plain black cotton poplin,  and behold - the sushi chef shirt!

A serious chef always uses the proper equipment.


Mr Needles insisted on a matching headband
As I said before, the fabric was a piece of Alexander Henry off-cut, and as luck would have it the name of this pattern is 'Yoko':


-which inspired Mr Needles to sing some Plastic Ono Band tunes:


Some details-

I used an old shirt of Mr. Needles' to make the pattern. Because I'm essentially a total cheapskate, I used the back of old Christmas wrapping paper to make the pattern.

Tracing the collar from the original shirt

There wasn't enough fabric to make the whole shirt in the patterned fabric so I cut the collar and back panel out of plain black poplin:

The contrast collar...

...and the plain black back section
I also trimmed the sleeves in the plain black, and added some trim to the front pocket:


And that's that! Mr Needles loves his new shirt, and hopefully I'll benefit from it with some good eatin'


 See you soon!

8 comments:

  1. Wow, great shirt! And you are so lucky to have a husband who appreciates what you do. Mine has made me promise never to make him anything as he doesn't think he'll be able to pretend to like it.

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    1. Thank you! Count yourself lucky with your husband - mine is constantly pestering me to make him ridiculous things like capes and jumpsuits!

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  2. What a great shirt Nicole and how amazing that your hubby does most of the cooking...and well too! My boyfriend can't cook to save his life bless him and for that, I haven't made him a shirt yet..haha!

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  3. Brilliant! I love all the contrast detail. It makes the shirt a lot more intersting than it would have been all in one print.

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  4. I love this Mrs Needles! What a great shirt, can't believe you traced that all from another shirt. Brilliant. I really think this is something that Dolly would love, and I can imagine her saying "if it ain't broken don't fix it, just trace a shirt your man already loves darling!". She really is wise. Great posing by Mr Needles too. We should do dinner with both Mr Needles and Mr Szabo in their new shirts. xx

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  5. great shirt! i'm going to have to pick your brains about the best way to rub off a shirt as i think that's what i'll need to do since hubby can't find a pattern he likes!

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    1. I don't really have a method - I just pin each section to paper and trace round it, then add seam allowance. Sometimes I'll measure the original and compare; I'll also look at how the original currently fits and make adjustments. In this case the arm scye was a bit tight, so I adjusted that. And that's about it!

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  6. I am so not going to show Mr Ooobop! this! I am pestered enough too! And I know he will love it. This is so totally amazing. And so inspiring that you traced off an existing one. Clever, clever lady xxxx

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