The Fabulous Challenge

It might seem as if I haven't been painting much lately, if you look at the dates on my blog posts, but I'm an artist, writer and maker - and making was dominating a good deal of my time during December and the early part of January. Obviously I made a few small gifts for special people but there was one big challenge that I took on, the client thankfully saying there was no hurry for it to be completed by Christmas, nor for the finished garment to be a pristine item of perfection. The challenge was to design and make a leather shirt from five supplied skins.

  There were a number of constraints in using this fine, light coloured leather. I couldn't use pins; I couldn't tack things into place before sewing; and I couldn't go wrong because every hole from the needle would show! It was a godsend that my trusty old sewing machine actually seemed to like working on the leather and presented me with no tangles, missed stitches or problems with tension.

I used a contrasting colour of thread and made the stitching an integral part of the design, based on a favourite denim shirt - I built the sleeves from scratch as the original had none. The client wanted slits instead of thick cumbersome cuffs so they looked good with the stitching.

And here is the finished shirt. A work of art!