Shirt of Sweet Vintage (Print)

Ages ago, I thrifted a length of a very sweet vintage floral print.  I used some of it for doll clothes--honestly, I figured I'd only ever use it for doll clothes.

Until, of course, I decided I wanted to use it for another modified Burda 7831.  There was about a yard and a quarter, which would have been plenty of fabric if it had been 45".  However, I knew it was vintage because it was 36".

I am, of course, stubborn.  I got the shirt I wanted out of it.

With only a small amount of  improvisation necessary.

Mostly, it went exactly as always.

I did, at the end, deviate from my normal anti-themed-buttons stance, and decided to use a set of dark red pearly buttons with flower petals etched into them.

The floral element is not conspicuous, and the color is a really good match for the red in the print--better than any other red or pink buttons I have.  Yes, of course, I did consider using faux horn buttons.  I acknowledge that they aren't always the best choice for a busy print.

This fabric was absolutely lovely to sew.  The lower ends of the bands stayed exactly where they were supposed to be while doing my "lazy band construction" top stitching

The big, improvisational deviation, however, is in the sleeves.

When I laid out the pattern pieces, to get an idea of if there was enough fabric at all before cutting, it looked like I would have to lay the sleeves out reversed from the rest of the pieces.  Well, I figured, that's not optimal, but the print is busy enough that it shouldn't be too obvious.

I started cutting, saving the sleeves for last, and, lo, there was not enough fabric left to cut them even reversed.  I did not want to make the shirt sleeveless, so I flipped and fiddled and quickly found that there was almost enough fabric for the sleeves if I cut them on the bias.

Now, I refuse to cut short sleeves on the cross grain, because they lack that subtle selvedge-to-selvedge stretch that woven cottons have, and that results in noticeably uncomfortable sleeves.  Bias, though, of course, is known for its stretch, so I figured it would work.

There was still the issue of the remaining contiguous fabric being just a bit narrower than needed.  I laid out the pattern piece so that the short edge was on the back of the sleeves, and pieced in those last few inches.  Here's a picture of that seam on one of the sleeves.

(tangent: everyone who says a 28mm lens can't do nice bokeh just isn't taking pictures of small-enough stuff...which people generally say you shouldn't be doing with a 28mm lens anyway.  Bah, I say.)

I pressed those seam allowances open and left the edges raw--mostly because I didn't want to try to serge two separate narrow seam allowances, and also because I knew there wasn't going to be a lot of that piecing seam left out on its own once everything was stitched and hemmed, so it didn't seem worth worrying about.

The edge of that piecing seam is just visible inside the sleeve here.  It's not going to be noticeable at all when worn.

One funny result of cutting the sleeves on the bias is that the print elements on the sleeves ended up in almost exactly the same orientation as they are on the bodice!

...on the front, at least.  Not so much on the back, but, again, this is a ditsy-enough print that it's not going to be obvious.

I am very happy I made this shirt, and I know I only decided to finally do it because I have black thread in the serger.  I have however, found that there aren't a lot of other projects I want to sew right now that would work with black overlocking, so I may be changing it again.  Maybe not back to white, but...definitely changing it.  How soon is unknown.