Ghost Shirt

 I am getting closer to being able to feel comfortable wearing separates again,and one of the things I'm most looking forward to is a range of close-fitting button-up shirts in novelty prints.

The pattern I once used to make many close-fitting button-up shirts in novelty prints was cut in a size I will probably never be able to wear again, and is long out of print, so I need to find a replacement pattern.  A big help in that search was when Coriander sent me Burda 7831

shown here with New Look 6080, which was called in for its tiny sleeve option, because the fabric I wanted to use for my first try at this Burda pattern...I didn't have a lot of that fabric, but I was determined to make it work.  So: shorter sleeves and a bit of contrast fabric and here's the result

Yes, there is a contrast fabric, although maybe it's not as much of a contrast as I usually go for

I might have been able to squeeze out the front band from the ghost print if I hadn't used some fabric from the edge to make doll clothes at some point in the last ~15 years (I've had the fabric a bit longer than that, but I made a swishy skirt from it somewhere around 2006.  It was a very good skirt, but it went away in the big "I have gained weight, time to start the wardrobe over again, hello, all dresses all the time" purge.)

Or, if there had been that un-doll-clothes-ed edge, there may have been enough of the ghost print to cut the weird collar bands that I also ended up cutting from the contrast print

But there probably still wouldn't've been enough of the ghost print to make the bottom of the collar

The collar that I glanced at how it was handled in the pattern instructions, said, "Ha ha! There's no need to follow those directions! I'll do it the same way I did the last button-up shirt!  Because I did the front band the same way and it's going beautifully"

I'll just say the collar went together fine but...not sure if buttoning the top button will ever be a real option, because of how the hubris of its construction makes the collar edges overlap strangely.  Which is fine, in terms of how I probably would never have wanted to button that top button anyway.

But.

I really should be making collars with stands, I think, to get them to do what I want my collars to do.

I'll try to keep that in mind for the future.

The sleeve decision worked out pretty well.  There's maybe a bit too much ease in the sleeve cap, but it was workable. (Yes, every time I sew sleeves, I remember Kathleen Fasanella's tenet that there should be no ease at all in sleeve caps, and they're all drawn wrong in commercial patterns anyway. Maybe someday I'll act on that.)

I did my usual "press the sleeve hem before sewing it to the garment" approach.  Anything to keep from wrestling a closed circle around a sleeve board, y'know?

I didn't do as much top stitching on this as I could have, although I initially thought I would, so the shoulders are edge stitched and top stitched 

but everything else is only edge stitched

This pattern has some deep darts on the front, which I reduced in depth by about a half inch off of one side.  The fit is OK now--future versions may see the dart made deeper or shallower as needed.

I looked up other reviews of this shirt--several people didn't like how short it is, but that's one of my favorite aspects of the design, both because I honestly like short button-up shirts (tuck things in?  me??) and because shorter shirt = less fabric needed = more options in my stash for making it.

And I do hope to make more of these!  More or less... (mutters something about the collar)  But I also need to make a skirt to wear with it, since my wardrobe is severely lacking skirts right now.  I have time to make both more shirts and some basic skirts, because it's still so hot outside that I'm going to keep wearing the loose tunic dresses just because they're so...uh...easy breezy.