Menswear. It tends to be a forgotten about part of dressmaking in my world. Let’s face it – why would we bother making stuff for our partners/ dads/ brothers/ friends when we could be making lots of pretty dresses for ourselves!!! 🤣 (that’s assuming the majority of you reading this are women by the way…)

But since I’ve gotten into the groove of making all my gifts rather than buying them, sometimes I just have to suck it up and do it!

For Father’s Day (here in the UK), my dad asked for some new t-shirts which, considering he’s not bought himself new clothes for a very long time, I thought was a very reasonable request.

I opted to try out the Aspen polo shirt from issue 3 of the La Maison Victor magazine. (I got mine from a WHSmiths if you’re looking one).

The t-shirt wasn’t anything too fancy – a regular fit short sleeve shirt with a collar and popover placket. It looked classic which was exactly what I wanted.

I chose some rib knit jerseys from Stoff & Stil for this project. Now these are 1×1 rib knits which means at first glance they don’t look like a rib as the surface is still really smooth but they have lots of stretch in them. It gives a great balance of comfort and luxury with a heavier weight fabric.

The pattern ended up being absolutely perfect. It went together beautifully and the instructions were pretty clear – I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for a polo shirt!

I sewed it all up using a walking foot on my regular machine and then overlocked the edges. I had to do it in two stages purely because I didn’t have the right colour overlocker thread and didn’t want to risk anything showing through!

It fitted on the first go so I’m super pleased with how it all turned out! I even got round to making him a second one!

(My dad was too embarrassed to have his photo taken for the blog and asked me to crop out his head! 😂)

I chose a contrasting collar, cuffs and placket for this second t-shirt which I think worked really well.

I like to idea of hacking the pattern further and doing some stripes or colour blocking. I think it could be a great way of using smaller pieces of fabric. Not that they use up that much fabric anyway – just over a metre each – but it’ll be a great way to maximise the yardage!

I’ve got a few more colours of this kind of jersey in the stash so I’ve a feeling I’ve be producing a few more of these for him in the future!