James has lost a lot of weight in the last six months, from a combination of cycle commuting, cutting back his drinking to three nights a week, and both of us eating low carb. He’s managed to shift his beer belly (“food baby!”) in a matter of months, but it also means that most of his clothes are too big for him. So with a December birthday and Christmas, I managed to sew him three different versions of the Seamwork Paxson top pattern to try and fill in his wardrobe a bit.
The grey wool/viscose Paxson
This first Paxson was made for his birthday using a charcoal grey wool/viscose jersey from Fabric Godmother. It’s not the cheapest jersey out there but it feels so warm and you can just tell from the feel alone that it’s a high quality fabric. It washes nicely and has great stretch and recovery, and I totally recommend it.
This first version fit him fairly well straight off the pattern – it’s nice and slim fitting through the waist and hips, and the sleeves were plenty long enough, too. The only issues were really around the neck area, so I made a mental note to adjust the pattern…
The claret wool/viscose Paxson
This next version is almost identical to the first – the fabric is the exact same wool/viscose jersey from Fabric Godmonther, only in the claret colourway. Why change when he was so happy with the first version, right?
I did indeed remember to alter the neckline, too – I lowered the CF by about an inch, then remeasured the neckline edge and increased the neckband piece accordingly. Though looking at the photos, I’m not sure this really helped the fitting issues around the neck at all…
The grey teeshirt Paxson
This third version was made after a fortuitous find in Ditto’s remnant table when I was down at their Brighton store in mid-December – there was a 1.3m piece of a super high quality grey cotton/lycra jersey that just had James’s name all over it, so of course I had to buy it!
There wasn’t enough fabric here to make a long sleeved version, but also I wanted to change it up a little since I already made him a grey, banded, long sleeved version. So I cut the sleeves short but also extended the hem to exclude the hem band, finishing it with my coverstitch instead. It’s still obviously the same pattern, but just a little more versatile.
The neck fit still isn’t quite right on either of the latter two (both of which were given as Christmas presents), and annoyingly, the last one has some issues at the back neck that weren’t present in the others, but he’s just happy enough to have some comfortable shirts that fit him better than the average baggy teeshirt and give him some variety for workwear.