The Fabric of Time

When I offered to repair a friend's shirt that had a large hole in the side, he asked me if I could embroider a stag on it as well. This is a very unconventional way to repair torn clothing, but it is unique and fit exactly what the owner wanted. I'm not good at embroidery, so it took a long time. The fabric is very thin, sheer polyester and did not show markings very well, but I managed to draw the outline with a pencil. Then, I used a chain stitch to embroider the design with standard cotton embroidery thread. I added the arrows freehand. I also repaired or replaced some of the original embroidered designs on the front as this much-loved shirt has seen years of wear and tear.

I made this shirt for a friend who gave me some weaving lessons and a 4-heddle table loom (!!!!). He requested a generic mid-19th century shirt that he could use for a range of time periods when giving weaving demonstrations. I chose to make a square-cut shirt inspired by 18th century styles, which, in retrospect, was probably not a good choice for mid-18th century, but it's passable. I used sturdy 100% cotton, machine sewed the long seams, and hand stitched much of the finishing.  Here's an underarm gusset with hand-sewn flat-felling on the seams. Interfacing on the shoulders to cover the armscye seams and add reinforcement 1/2 inch hand sewn hem Another view of the hem Triangle gussets at the side vents near the hem--adds strength and stability Cuffs with stroke gathered sleeves--these are very 18th century, but look so nice that I wanted to use the technique for this 19th century shirt. Still accurate, but maybe machine sewn cuffs would be ...