Tinkering: 2026-01-25: Simon 5 Shirt

Another Simon was created: Simon #5. This time, the motivation came from a very nice fabric that my spouse had found and given to me as a present. Also, I wanted a simple shirt design without a lot of alignment like last time so that the work would be more relaxing.

It's magic mushrooms!

The pattern is almost the same as before, with only very minor tweaks (I think I optimised the collar button again, but only slightly). This is a normal button-down shirt.

The fabric is printed with only a few colours, but they are very vibrant. Some react to UV light and start glowing more than others. The light blue and the pink dots behave this way.

The fabric I used for my first Simon shirt was a perfect single colour match for making inner parts and details, like the welt pocket, the sleeve plackets, and the inside of the cuffs and color.

Just barely visible: I added the pleats on the back again at the side, about 2cm from the side seam.

There's a welt pocket again from purple red fabric (which really looks pink here), and the sleeve plackets are the same fabric. And of course, there is my logo.

The fabric is basically oriented up in most of the parts, but the cuffs are rotated by 90°. When I look at my cuffs, the mushrooms are upright, but others looking at me will see them upside down in this position.

The button and button hole plackets were the only place where I had to and could align the fabric, and I did. It's never perfect, because this shirt has a proper button placket, and the buttons have a bit of wiggle room, so the sides may move out of alignment slightly. But, overall, it works.

The shirt has shiny, colour coated mother-of-pearl buttons.

The welt pocket was much easier this time, without complicated alignment.

A single colour light blue/cyan fabric is used as interfacing in this shirt, so that the machine-stitched button holes will have some visible blue thread ends where the button hole is cut open. In other shirts, I found it inevitable and somewhat unbeautiful that interfacing threads become visible where the button holes are cut open, and in this shirt, I made it a feature by using blue interfacing fabric.

The inner yoke uses the same single colour light blue/cyan fabric that also matches the blue colours in the shirt. Also, I liked the selvedge of the fabric, with its neon yellow background, so I included a strip of it in the inner yoke.

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