Patchwork Tunic

This is an upcycled garment, made from old shirts. My husband wanted to toss out some of his old dress shirts that were a linen/cotton blend, and suddenly I saw a tunic.

Tunic Sketch

Muslin

I designed a pattern for a fitted tunic, with a curved yoke and princess seam waist/skirt lines. It would have full loose short sleeves, and lacing at the back. I made several muslins until I was happy with the fit.

Assembling the panels

With the pattern pieces prepared, I started cutting "random" chunks out of the shirts, and positioning them together to make a big enough piece of fabric to cut out each pattern piece. I was aiming for pieces that looked somewhat random, but also were overall complimentary and I tried to keep the four colours balanced, with no colour adjacent to itself as much as possible.

Flat-felled seams

Because of the patchwork and irregular effect, I knew I'd have trouble with puckering seams so I decided to flat-fell everything. Every seam in the entire tunic is flat-felled, with the exception of the yoke and sleeve seams, since those had significant curves.

Trimming one side of the seam allowance

Pressing the wider seam allowance over the narrower

Top stitching the seam down, very close to the edge

What it looks like on the other side. No raw edges visible anywhere.

Joining angled flat-felled seams

The most difficult seams in the entire piece are the side seams, where the 'V' insert panel meets the side seams. Those seams are also flat-felled, and took a lot of careful planning to figure out how to flat-fell a V.

Inside view, in progress

Outside view, after finishing

So many pretty-looking flat-felled seams!

Back tie loops

Back tie loops and lacing are made from the same fabric, and were incorporated into the seams at the beginning, to be integrated into the flat-felling.