TYPE 402 TWO BIRDS SHIRT IN FLOWERPOT COTTON DROPCLOTH

The Two Birds Shirt is a further development from the Type 401 Pleat Pocket Shirt. The Two Birds Shirt creates two pockets using a single line of pocket stitching. The pattern is cut with a large front panel pleated into the yoke. Once this is pressed into place, a patch pocket is sewn through all three layers of the pleat. This creates a standard hand-height patch pocket on the outside of the shirt, but its stitch lines also hold the pleat together as a deeper chest pocket, accessed vertically. The fabric is cut sideways, with no shoulder seam, creating a soft, biased shoulder that stretches out and softens as the garment wears in. The shirt is sewn with all-cotton thread and finished with dyed cotton-covered metal buttons and a Made in USA blue label.

The cotton dropcloth fabric is woven in USA from American cotton. The main customer for this fabric is Sherwin Williams, a paint company founded in Ohio in 1866. The intended use is as drop-cloth, hard-wearing fabric to cover floors and furniture during interior painting. The fabric structure is a tightly woven left hand twill, which acts as a right hand twill when cross cut.

Garment dyeing raw cotton garments accentuates the manufacturing processes, shrinking the seams and bringing out latent texture from the yarn. As well as developing two shades from natural logwood dye, clothes in this collection are offered direct dyed in Flowerpot. Direct dyes lie over the top of the fabrics and sewing threads, rather than reacting with the makeup of the fibers themselves, and give a slightly less uniform colour, which shows up in variations of texture and character on the garment. Flowerpot has long been a Tender staple colour, and is the colour of terracotta, cooked earth.