The All State Shirt

By Sarah 

Ok everyone, get out your metric conversion calculators (what, you don’t have one?) and make the All State Shirt from Merchant and Mills.  There’s no need to be intimidated, like I was, by these classy Canadian produced patterns for they are a pure and simple pleasure to use.  And us gals at the shop will be happy to convert the required meters to yards so you now exactly how much fabric to get. (No calculators needed, I promise!)

This shirt is 50’s inspired and thats why it has that boxy, bowling shirt look about it, which is cool!  It has a yoke, so the collar is extra easy to put in and the overload of topstitching, in a contrasting color, is what makes the shirt special, I think.  

I LOVE that all the pattern pieces for the All State are on ONE piece of tissue pattern paper.  I don’t know why I think that’s so great, but I do.  Less papers to try and fold back in their original perfectly creased, impossible to recreate way, right?  Oh, and the pattern steps are front and back of ONE piece of paper too and read from top to bottom not left to right.  The instructions are worded elegantly and are easy to follow.  

There is a step that says to ‘organize the yoke’ and after you ‘organize’ the yoke, the instructions say to tack or baste so you can then topstitch it to the back of the shirt.  I used strips of Stitch Witchery (an iron-on web tape whose most common application is in no-sew hemming) instead, for better time efficiency. Its a good product to have on hand for things like this.   

Like I said before, it was a pleasure to sew and surprisingly easy.  We, at Bolt, have beautiful solid and printed chambrays, cotton voiles and many more All State appropriate fabrics.  I cannot wait to try another garment from the pattern archive of Merchant and Mills.  Happy Sewing to all!