Summer Seersucker

Summer always comes to me with flashbacks of picking blueberries in the endless hot hours of humid summer mornings that were sealed in the afternoon with fuchsia watermelon. The slices were so full of juice that it just ran down our fingers in pink streams and stained our cotton t-shirts, leaving all the children an archetypal picture of youth's innocent flavor of thoughtless mess and adventure. Forever popular in the summer, seersucker is another thing one would find if she rifled through my summer memories, but it was reserved for Sunday attire and baby's clothes. Not so anymore, though I still think it belongs to some category of semi-formal. 

In lieu of summers past, my brother asked me to make an unlined 3-piece seersucker suit for him with a waistline made for suspenders. Right now the pants have been made and the jacket and vest are works in progress. The pants were a stepping stone for me, as I have never made things for suspenders, and it required a button fly. More on that later.

We bought an immense amount of blue seersucker so that I would have some wiggle room, but we still had about 2 yards left. So, naturally, I made something for myself with it.😁I chose a shirt out of Yoshiko Tsukiori's 'Clothing for everyday wear' book, part of the Stylish Dress Book Collection. Shirt 'Y' was my shirt of choice. Honestly, if the seersucker was anything but blue, lavender. or black, I probably would have used it for someone else. The shirt was straight forward and it is very delicately feminine, which is a little change for me, since I tend to opt for bolder colors and patterns or things that don't have that particular kind of sweetness to them. I'm not one to really wear ruffles, but it works on this. It also has plenty of gathering on the front and back panels. I was also worried that it would look like baby's clothes since it is seersucker with ruffles, but it's not like I have a matching skirt with it, so it's ok. There were a few things that I was a little unhappy with, like the way it stands in the back a little  around the neck, and there is some excessive bagginess above the bow on the outer front piece. That's what I get for not making a sort of model or mock up, I suppose. All in all, I really like the way it turned out and wearing it.

*The captions do have a little extra info on the piece.*

Model in the book.

Drawn version.

Yes, that says sew '1/32' of an inch from the edge on the binding 😆

The front view. SO much gathering on the front.

Some sleeve ruffles.

The back. There were also some gathers above the back hem band.

Muffy wanted to pose, too. 

The bow.

On the hanger and in need of ironing.

 Happy Sewing!