Crossed Animals

 The reason I made that 'test' shirt was because I wanted to make sure I had the collar modifications right, because I had bought an Animal Crossing print from JoAnn with the intent of making a button up shirt, and I wanted to make sure I had the pattern right before cutting into the *gasp* $8/yard fabric (yes that's the discount price.)

Confident in the pattern mash up, I cut everything out

 And in doing so, I made a huge mistake that I would not discover until construction was under way.

 

There was no way I wasn't going to pattern match such a bold print. 

The pattern calls for front bands, and while I know I could have pattern matched those, since I was working with only a yard and a half of fabric, I didn't feel confident that I had enough to cut the top-most band with proper pattern-matching.  So!  I figured I'd just flip the bands to the back, leaving the bodice fabric exposed to the very edge.

So I cut the front with pattern matching and attached the bands and sewed the shoulders and prepared to construct the collar

and then I realized

By flipping the seam allowance to the back

instead of encasing it in the band (which is also wider than the seam allowance)

well

I had made the front about 1½" inches narrower than it needed to be. 

And the pattern matching meant I couldn't adjust anything at the front edges.

Yeah.

So I set it aside and considered my options overnight.

A-ha!  I could make the side seams narrower than they were supposed to be!  So I sewed them at about ¼" instead of 5/8" and that did help

well

It helped on the parts of the shirt that were in line with where the side seams are.  Pinning everything so the pattern matched still resulted in a lot of Wrongness.

 I decided to unpin the front and see how it wanted to hang.  I could still pin the pattern matching on the lower tree with no issues.  Higher up...  OK, technically, there is a tiny sliver of Isabelle's ear on the edge of the shirt next to Blathers, but it's so small I figured I could get away with not pattern matching that spot, and the shirt hung better with that slack.

 (The bit of Isabelle's ear is just visible at the top center of the above photo.)

I was able to get one more pin in above the Isabelle/Blathers level before the shirt started fighting being closed, so I left that and stopped for the night.  I pondered my options as I fell asleep.

The first thing I decided was that I would make buttons and buttonholes all the way to the collar, but not cut open the top few button holes so there would never be a temptation to try to button them and make the shirt hang so badly.  The unintentionally narrowed front meant the neckline was too small to button, anyway (...like...like the original Burda pattern's neckline...the one I borrowed the collar and neck from another pattern to fix in the first place...) 

 

After more thought, I decided I would also re-sew the fronts of the sleeve cap/armscye seams to be ¼" instead of 5/8", just to eke out a little more width up there.

And it worked!

I had originally keyed the pattern match in the other direction, but I decided early on (so early, in fact, that I had no idea what other decisions would need to be made) that I didn't want to have the overlap end in the middle of KK Slider and Blathers's faces.  I was happy to see that, when I closed it the other way, the overlap was in the edge of the trees and that tiny bit of Isabelle's ear.   I'm glad I made that decision.

The main reason I choose to do pattern matching across front openings on bold prints is so the highly distinct design elements don't accidentally repeat on either side of the opening or a seam. Just like Rover and Rover here on either side of the sleeve seam.

Yeah.

I kept the red thread in the serger.

I gambled on using the stretchiness of the un-stay-stitched neckline to expand it to fit the full neck band.  I was surprised that it worked--happy, but surprised.

I was able to buy this fabric in person, so I knew how large the print was (a lot of reviews from online orders express surprise at the size of things.)

I won't say the finished shirt is perfect, but it's so much better than it felt like it was going to be while I was continuously trying to figure out how to fix it.  I expected it would be one of those "I'm going to hate it as soon as it's finished but in a few months I will be far enough removed from the pain of making it that it will be fine" projects.

But.

Actually?

I liked it immediately.

I'll still have to wait a few months for weather to be warm enough to wear it.