Playtime Brights

 I thrifted this cloth at the end of 2015

And for years had wanted to use it to make vintage Simplicity 1692

Which I had previously made, once, before starting this blog.  I remembered it as being easy, so I thought it would be a good project after the last shirt I made.

And it was! despite some...decisions. 

Not every oddity involved was my fault, though.

(And I will note: I resisted my base impulses and did no top stitching.)

For example, the pattern only called for five buttons--no mention of button size at all.

When I had made this shirt previously, I'd used larger buttons, because I have the idea that the fewer buttons there are, the larger those buttons should be.  I didn't, however, have any larger buttons, and the buttons I did have in a good color and correct quantity weren't in any way 'larger.'  But I went ahead with them!

As usual, I tried on the shirt, marked the fullest point of the bust, and spaced the other buttons around that.  And made the buttonholes horizontal for once.

Interfacing in this pattern is completely optional.  Scandalous!  Of course I used interfacing.  First cuts from the full bolt of interfacing I bought (with a 50% off discount) from JoAnn earlier this year, too.

This shirt pattern technically has a convertible collar, but, due to some of my...decisions...the collar opening is just a bit too snug to be closed at the neck, so I didn't sew on the small button and hand-worked button loop.

I still need to change my serger blades (I have the replacements, I just...haven't replaced them), so the seam finishes are a touch ragged.  They'd be worse if I had been trying to cut off the edges, instead of trying to encase the existing edges, since my seam allowances were only ½".

And my seam allowances were only ½" because I wasn't confident a vintage size 12 pattern--which is a modern size 10--would necessarily fit me the way it fit me 9 years ago.

Now, a ½" seam allowance on a normally-cut pattern would only net 1/8" on each side of each seam, for a ½" total of size gain.  So.  When I cut this out, I eyeballed adding another ¼" around the sides and sleeves.

My original idea had been to sew that with ¼" seams, but I got nervous about how much bigger that would make the neck opening compared to the collar and sewed the seams at ½" instead. That means adding ¼" and sewing at ½" effectively becomes sewing an unaltered seam allowance at 3/8"

which I could have done without adding the extra when cutting.

Learning experience?  Learning experience.

The seam allowance changes would impact the neck opening size due to the raglan sleeves

 

 Ooohhhh, raglan sleeves are so so so easy to sew, aren't they?

The sleeve openings are the kind o thing I'd expected from the previous shirt, with a bias band encasing the raw edges of a slash

The pattern didn't call for the strips to be cut on the bias, but I did have enough of the fabric left to cut strips on a bias of some sort.

Which is mostly notable because, even with my usual way of cutting that means I can get everything out of less fabric than the pattern requests, I came up short in a few places when cutting the pieces for this shirt.

I didn't let that convince me to abandon the project or go for some contrast print yardage, though, because there was definitely enough square footage of fabric left, it just wasn't...contiguous.  Time for piecing!

 

 The piecing on the sleeve bands in a nicely concealed place.  The piecing on the back of one of the sleeves...well...with the print, it (maybe) isn't so obvious.

I sewed the facings to the fronts, right sides together, at 5/8", then turned them right-side-out and pressed the hem up 5/8", then in half, and edge stitched along that without worrying about the distance from the edge.  Between the EZHem and the fact that the hem is so far from line of sight, I'm trying not to worry so much about absolute accuracy.  This shirt is meant to be tucked in, anyway.

And here's the back!

This print simultaneously makes me think of clowns, blood spatter, lovecore, and bacteria on a petri dish, so, might as well've made something vintage with it, to add to the aesthetic chaos, y'know?