Pastel Dots & Neutral Bats

Spring and Fall, Together

The bat print was one of this year's JoAnn Halloween offerings--purchased with the intention of making yet another Simplicity 3263, even though I'm not really fond of wearing mostly-white things in general.  When shuffling through my cloth stash and the purple dots (thrifted) landed (randomly) next to the bats, well, yeah, they were gonna get sewn together, and with good ol' New Look 6217

I have no idea how many times I've made this--or variations on this, specifically the home-made variation with the front panels fused together so there's a single fabric and a deep dart--and I've always made it with buttons and button holes instead of snaps or loops and buttons as directed. (And most of those times I made this, with button holes, was back in the days of using the mid-1990s Singer's four-step buttonhole, which was...kinda terrible.  Yet I persisted.)   I think I'd only made this shirt once (cupcakes!) since getting the buttonholer--the lovely lovely buttonholer--so I had no hesitation about making it again.

Taadaa.

I forgot, initially, about pattern matching across the placket, but it was no problem to re-cut one of the front panels, matching the print to one of the panels cut out originally.  The unused panel largely became one of the pieces of the collar, so not much waste, yay.  The front sides, though,  had to be cut again because I'd cut them too short because one of my perpetual variations on this pattern is making it shorter, but, despite doing that pretty consistently, I have in no way marked it...  There was more than enough of the purple for the do-over.

Topstitched close to the edges and seams, of course.

Not the straightest when you're looking this closely, but...no-one's going to be looking this closely when I wear it.  I hope not, at least.

And I mentioned the pattern matching

I really should re-sew all of the buttons, only this time stick a straight pin under them while stitching so a shank forms, because right now the thread is too taut and distorting the edges because it won't allow the buttonholes to...um...relax. (I am hasty and usually sew buttons on with the machine.)

Have I mentioned how much I love using mock tortoise shell buttons?  One thing that I always thought made my stuff look too home-made was buttons that were too perfectly matchy matchy.  Mock tortoise shell buttons work a bit like camouflage and blend into just about any print, especially when the colors can be closely coordinated.  So.  This makes me happy.