Today Lydia of Little Kiwis is sharing her version of the Maxwell Top! The Maxwell Top is a completely cute (and cool) boys button up top pattern and it’s available over at our shop!
I was lucky to be chosen as a reviewer of the very spunky “Maxwell Top“. Ever since I stumbled across Shwin&Shwin, I have admired and coverted this shirt. I’m not sure why I never made it for my wee boy (could be that I’m scared of shirts, the collars mainly – this is my 2nd one THIS was my first), because as you can see it is super cute on him.
The pattern taped together easily and I love that colours are used to distinguish between the sizes. I seem to go cross eyed with black dots and dashes!!
I chose a really cute train fabric that I bought from Spotlight, it is cotton but not quilting weight as we have rather hot summers here in Tauranga, New Zealand.
The only problem that I had with the pattern was with the facing. It called for the curved edge (right hand side) to be hemmed, but as you can see by the photo it is rather impossible to hem a line like that. So I just trimmed it down so that it was a curve. This change makes no issue with the fit of the shirt.
The instructions are well written and there were only 2 things that I needed to “go with my gut” on. #1 When attaching the accent collar fabric, it didnt say to pin it to the right side of the shirt which it needs to be, it just said pin it to the neckline etc. I had to guess that it needed to be pinned to the right side. #2 there was a black dot mentioned in the instrcutions that wasn’t on my pattern piece, but this wasn’t a biggy as it was where the collar was to finish on the neckline.I had a wee bit of trouble with the collar getting it to sit right and there was a bit of messy stitching going on, which is thankfully hidden when the collar is turned down. I’m hoping to make another shirt so will work on this collar next time to improve my sewing.
This shirt is a relatively quick sew, I taped, cut and sewed it up in under 3 hours, and that is with kiddlet interruptions. I love all the little details on it, the top stitching, the button tab, the sleeve tabs, back yolk, the pockets (which I only did 1 as I ran out of brown 🙁 )
I really love this shirt, it looks just like a bought one, its super comfortable, Elijah had no problem playing it it, and on a hot summer day it is loose enough to be cool.
He loved that it had trains on it as this is a large interest at the moment.
Perfect for outside in the summer sun.
And perfect for spunky photos too.
*****
Lydia – thank you for sharing your expertise and talents! And your model? He’s got some killer brown eyes. Adorable!