Present Joys

Yellow seersucker from Jo-Ann Fabrics. Cheap stuff; annoyingly thin. I imagine that’ll be good for . I made a bunch of corrections to last week’s terrible, awful draft, and it is dramatically improved. However, the neck is still about 1” too big. As you can see, I have yet to sew on the buttons… but I will do that soon. I’m actually going to wear this one. And I’m taking what I learned and applying it to next week’s shirt! Onwards!

This could have been a really nice shirt. After I finished last week’s shirt, I got a little overconfident with my drafting abilities, so I went into my pattern and made some drastic changes, especially in the yoke area. And I don’t know why, but I didn’t measure the final neckline on my pattern before I used it to cut out this great polka-dot fabric from Sew to Speak. As a result, the neckline is uncomfortably large as result of the yoke-shoulder seam being too small. It is an odd problem to have… and one that I will not make twice.

I used cheap muslin as interfacing, instead of a proper interfacing, and I think the effect is much better. Since the muslin is not fusible, it floats as a separate layer between the shirting, and this looks much better. There’s another lesson I learned from this project.

So that’s why this shirt doesn’t have buttonholes, a pocket, or a finished hem. And I don’t think I will finish it. I’m not happy enough with it, and I can always re-use most of the fabric for pocketing or something.

To make up for the wasted time, I’ve already started assembling my next shirt. Live and learn…

Here it is: my first shirt of the summer! I cut this shirt from the pattern I made over Christmas break, so it’s virtually the same as the ones I made at that time, with the notable exception of dropping the neckline by about 1” in the front.

The fabric is Spechler Vogel Textiles Orange Chambray (60-in.) from Sew to Speak (purchased for $8/yd). I’m not sure quite how much I ended up using since I used some scraps of the same fabric for another project last year. The buttons are expensive genuine-pearl buttons from Banasch’s Fabrics in Cincinnati. They are all a little differently-shaped and differently-colored and are completely worth the price.

So, this is definitely my best shirt to date. I’m becoming very comfortable sewing . The fabric is lovely, but the finished product. I used the fusible, woven, 100% cotton lightweight interfacing from Banasch’s (the same kind I’ve been using in bow ties). In hindsight the interfacing is heavier than I would have liked. I’m not sure how to handle this going forward.

I need to shore up my pattern in a few places (specifically the breast and yoke), and the sleeves could stand to be a quarter-inch longer. But overall I’m very proud of the product.