Striped Strathcona

My husband often jokes, "When are you going to make me a suit?" And I tell him that I will never make him a suit.  Never say never, but honestly, few sewing prospects excite me less than the idea of tackling a full men's suit.

But a t-shirt? That I can do.

Last year I bought the Thread Theory Parkland Wardrobe Builder. I love all three pieces and am looking forward to making the Jedediah shorts this summer and a Newcastle cardigan for fall.  But first I tried out the Strathcona Henley.

I measured J carefully, this being the first time I have ever sewn for him, and he fell squarely into the medium size.  I was concerned, having read reviews that recommended sizing up, that this might be too small, but decided to go ahead and as you can see, it is fine.  I read over the instructions for the placket, noting that those without much experience sewing knits were encouraged to hand sew the placket.  I have a lot of knit experience, though, so I figured I could handle it.  Plus, I wasn't sure that hand-sewing through six layers of fabric and two of interfacing at the bottom of the placket was going to be all that easy.

Well.  I had a beast of a time with that placket. I lost count of how many times I ripped out my top stitching, how many times I re-pressed the placket, how many times I tugged at it to get it to sit right. And finally I gave up.  It's a t-shirt.  It should not take 5 hours to sew.  The placket looks ok from a distance, and I guess that is fine, as no one but me should be getting that close to my husband anyway ;)

J is 6'1" but his height is all in his legs.  So I cut 3" off the hem before turning it up 1". I probably should have cut off just 2".  I cut the short sleeves per the pattern but ended up taking 3" off those, too, and I like the length they ended up.

I asked him how he liked it and he was kind of blasé about the whole thing.  It turns out he's not particularly fond of the fabric I chose.  The Cloud 9 organic cotton interlock is dreamy to wear (I know, I tried the shirt on to see how it would look on me - and it's definitely cut for a man, in case you were wondering), but he does not like the color.

I may have told him to suck it up.  I think the color really suits him, and it is a nice neutral to go with some of his more colorful shorts. But I have ordered some rust orange, charcoal and light blue knits to make him a couple basic tees from the pattern.  The man loves orange.

I don't think it is super-noticeable in these photos, but J's left shoulder is lower than his right.  This is a result of the stroke.  While his left shoulder and arm are no longer entirely immobile, they are still vastly weaker than the right side.  So his muscles don't hold his left shoulder up the way they do his right.  As I was writing this post, I noticed that the neckline of the shirt shifts over to the left until it is stopped by his neck.  In addition to making it look like the shirt is too big on the left side, it makes the left sleeve does hang funny off his shoulder and it looks as though it is longer than the right sleeve, when in fact they are exactly the same.  

Going forward, I wonder whether there is an easy fix for this issue.  I've heard about sloping shoulder adjustments but don't know exactly what they entail, nor whether it is possible to do the adjustment on one shoulder only. If anyone has any thoughts, I'd be happy to hear your ideas!

Thanks for reading!