I can’t, for the life of me, find something that I’ve been looking for. Five or six years ago, I drew up this beautiful design for a flamenco-style shirt inspired by the monarch butterfly’s wings. I’m not kidding when I say that this thing was the sort of thing that a Mediterranean version of Freddie Mercury crossed with Elton John would wear if they were 100 times sexier and 1000 times more stylish.
Armed with the confidence that I was going to be the next big thing in fashion, I looked online at how much it would cost to custom-print a pattern onto silk. Then, after I’d started breathing again, I looked into the cost of doing it on cotton, before deciding to stick that idea in my back pocket, where I promptly forgot about it.
✓ Project Bucket List is all about making things happen that I’ve been putting off. And while the adage of “Why buy a shirt for £25 when you can make your own for £240 in materials?” remained firmly in my mind as I wrote the list, making a shirt from scratch was still something I really liked the idea of doing.
I’m going to deviate slightly from where you’re expecting this to go. I did not make a monarch butterfly flamenco shirt, and I did not fist fight Gok Wan for a clothes trophy, nor did Elton John bring me out on stage to personally thank me for revolutionising fashion. Instead, I found myself sitting next to my fiancée, Kymberley, one afternoon when an email came through, congratulating her for her nomination for the One Voice Awards.
The prestigious ceremony at the heart of the voice acting industry, which celebrates talent across the world, is held every year, and every year they offer a theme for the party. The theme for 2026 was Shakespeare, and so, Kymberley presented an idea: “Why not make me a doublet?“
Now, I’ve never been to a tailor before. I’m not that kind of middle-class, but from what I’m led to believe from movies, tailors often take measurements from their clients, with a big floppy tape measure that they wrap around their neck. But, for the people who make clothing at home, the go-to option is usually a pattern, a large paper cutout that gives the DIY clothier the shapes to stitch together. Keeping in mind that I was on a budget, I opted for a third option: duct tape.
Standing in a boiling hot conservatory, I wrapped Kymberley up in cling film and duct tape, making her look like a hotter version of C3-PO, before drawing a bunch of lines across the tape and cutting it off her. I labelled the pieces up and spread this topographical question mark in front of me.
Knowing that the awards were in exactly one month, and that I’d never used a sewing machine before, I waited two and a half weeks before getting started. I cut up an old roll of canvas to test it. The process of creating the trial garment took a little less than an hour, which sounds impressive until I explain that the whole job just entailed cutting out seven shapes, then pinning them together. I didn’t even bother sewing it all up.
So, Kymberley tried it on, and I felt very proud about it. “I’m obviously an excellent tailor”, I thought. “Tailoring is easy, and I happen to be excessively good at it. I’m a natural.” I was aggressively shortsighted with my feelings towards tailoring, because it turns out the difficult part of making something from scratch is not the step where you cut out shapes.
I waited another week before fishing out an old tapestry that I’d once won in a bidding war back during the year that I was trying to buy an antique gun. The tapestry had a beautiful deer tableau plastered across the front, with plenty of different sections for me to cherry-pick textures. Using the aforementioned shapes as guides, I got to work, then got started on the sewing machine.
Sewing machines are a marvel of engineering. I’ve watched a video on how they work, and I still don’t fully understand how they work, which, according to Arthur C Clarke, makes them magic. The fact that I don’t understand them probably contributes to the trouble I had with mine.
Sometimes, using a sewing machine gives you the same feeling as gliding through paper with sharp scissors. You know when you don’t even need to cut, it just, shing, crrrrrr. Nice. A perfect line positioned just along the very edge of a crease, the sort of thing that Bond Street takes for granted, but for a newcomer, feels like flow and mastery. Full of cockiness, I’d then move on to a new bit and immediately need to rethread everything.
Because more often than not, the machine stops and jams. And then the thread disconnects. It won’t go through four layers of thick fabric, and why is it not going backwards? I’m pressing the backwards button. Now the thread won’t catch. Sometimes the thread breaks, and I don’t notice until I’ve got to the end of the fabric. Sometimes I turn the blasted fabric around, and the other side looks like a pile of tapeworms. Why? Why.
“A bad workman blames his tools” is a stupid phrase, because in this scenario, I am blaming myself, and yet I don’t let that stop me from being a bad workman. I found that every time I connected something, fixed something, or made an adjustment, I was fighting a losing battle against a strop.
I decided that the best course of action was to stop and start, so I did a little here, a little there. Then I’d step away from it before I wanted to lob the sewing machine through a window. Occasionally, I’d put it on Kymberley and make frowny faces. I understand now why so many people in fashion films are portrayed as bitches. I turned into one immediately. This is why it took me a few days to do, but by the end of it, with the addition of a collar and a few tasselled shoulder pads (two), the thing was done.
It was beautiful. A cropped sleeveless piece with a slightly jagged hem, with exaggerated shoulders lined with frayed red that gives a sense of theatrical decay. Ornate deer patterned across a stylish cut that flows in at the waist, with irregular flashes of turquoise, burnt orange, black, cream, and rust. In short, a maximalist’s wet dream.
So, for context, I tend to be good at stuff. I pick things up quickly, but what that means is that sometimes when I’m not immediately good at something, I become less interested in it. This was an exercise in persevering at something because I did want to achieve it, even if it was hard to do.
It also acted as a little bit of a philosophical wake-up call on my weight loss goals, which I’ve been heavily neglecting. I keep looking for a version of myself that finds it easy. But he doesn’t exist. I haven’t put the work in to become that person.
I’ve written about accepting failure before, and that’s not what this is about. It’s about celebrating sticking at something, even though the stupid machine keeps getting stuck, and I want to lie on the ground.
Kymberley went to the awards show, and everybody loved her doublet. Properly too, she looked regal and fantastic and theatrical and not like she’d spent an afternoon being mummified in duct tape by a man who didn’t have tailoring experience. She got lots of compliments. Someone even asked if that’s what I do for work.
And if you think that the dopamine rush of hearing “good job” would be enough for me to start a clothing line, you’ll be sad to hear that I put the sewing machine back in the attic immediately, where it belongs.
I’ve stopped looking for the monarch butterfly design, too.
See, I’ve made a garment now. I scowled a lot during the process, but now I get to act smug around people who wear fast fashion.
I learnt about making clothes, and I understood why fashion designers shout at interns, but most of all, I got a big ole’ cognitive reinforcement that staying in the room with the thing you suck at counts as a win, and there are pictures to prove it.
