Negroni Shirt Pattern - by Colette Patterns

I finally had some time to finish my test garment for the Negroni shirt from the Walden series of men's patterns from Colette Patterns.

I am really happy with the way it turned out, so I thought I'd do a brief little review of the pattern for y'all.

Negroni is a solid intermediate pattern. Sewing shirts takes a bit of effort and I had not sewn one with a collar, flat felled seams, a yoke, and all the rest in quite some time. The instructions are well written and if you have any experience with shirt making you should have an easy time following along. If not, this is a great pattern to give it a try!

I decided to sew the short sleeve version in XXL as the Engineer likes a bit of comfort and ease in his clothing. After finishing the shirt and he tried it on, I think an XL would have easily fit him, but he was perfectly happy with the size.

I started by tracing the pattern (I'll wax poetic about tracing patterns some other day) and cutting it out of some dodgy quality 1980's quilting cotton I inherited from my grandmother. Since this was intended to be a test garment, I didn't want to use any of the good stuff.

I made the shirt exactly to spec. Following the instructions to the letter, I like to do this on my first run with a new pattern, then make any adjustments and order changes according to my own sewing style and intuition the next time around.  

All of the pieces came together perfectly. Any issues I had were due to sewist error and not because of any problems with the pattern.  The only alteration I had to make was cutting 2 1/2 inches from the sleeve length; yes, one of the Engineer's nicknames is Sasquatch, but even Sasquatch couldn't pull those sleeves off - these sleeves were seriously long!

The shirt length itself was just right, even the buttonhole placement from the pattern piece was right on; this is something I always have to change and mark myself, but since the Mr. wasn't around for that phase I went with it and was pleasantly surprised that it worked out as well as it did. 

I am thrilled that he likes it and that I ended up with a wearable test garment. 

It also re-lit the spark for flat felled seams - Oh I do love a flat felled seam... hmmm maybe a little flat felled seam tutorial is in order next week! Anyone in?

I highly recommend this pattern. It's so great to have a solid men's pattern and I can't wait to make it again in some quality fabric. I have a feeling this is going to be a long lived and oft used pattern. Hooray!

You can find the pattern in many of your local fabric shops or you can get it Here!