Colorblock Shirt
This project assumes you already can sew a plain shirt.
This is a different sort of sewing project for Julie or Ivy. Colorblock shirts were a popular funky shirt style from the 1970s. You can Google some image examples ... or, just look on the cover of Julie's Journey.
You need:
Cloth -- I'd say at least three colors. You can
use more, but don't go nuts.
Patterns -- A standard shirt pattern will do.
Your Sewing Stuff -- Needle, thread, scissors ...
basics.
BEFORE YOU START TO GATHER YOUR MATERIALS, please consider that in the 1970s, people (obviously) coordinated colors differently. Julie and Ivy would not have had a delicate pink, lavender and baby blue affair. Colors were bold and very contrasting. Go look some examples up on the Internet before picking your colors. I got my color scheme from an outfit I found in an old Sears-Roebuck catalog. Okay, so consider your basic shirt pattern.
In typical, you take said pattern, put it down on the cloth, cut it out and sew it up, right?
This time, we're going to piece together a piece of cloth to be slightly larger then the pattern before we cut. Start cutting squares and rectangles and fitting them together until you get something similar to this:
Make sure it's bigger than your pattern. You'll need enough 'blocks' to make two sleeves, a front, two backs, and whatever collar you were planning to put on it.
Sew the separate pieces together on your machine. It's exactly like piercing a quilt together at this point.
IRON THE EVER LOVING HELL OUT OF THE PIECES. Iron them twice. Three times. Iron iron iron. This project will come out looking awful if you don't work with totally flat pieces.
NOW, treat it like a regular sewing project. Pin your pattern on the pieces, and cut them out as usual. Start like this:
And you should get stuff like this.
Sew it together like a normal shirt pattern. Here's my finished one. Yours will look different because of the different colors, of course, and the fact that I'm sure you didn't put your blocks together the same way.
Enjoy!