Potpourri Shirt

 After making all the simple knit shirts and basic skirts, I felt like sewing some button up shirts again.  I thought my first choice of shirt pattern would work with my first choice of fabric, but when I unfolded the fabric, I found several faded areas that severely cut down on the available contiguous yardage.

 I did pick out a different fabric for the first choice shirt pattern--along with a stack of other fabric and shirt combinations, and another fabric for the New Look 6843 skirt pattern--and decided to fall back on the modified Burda 7831, this time remembering to add width to the front opening (which I wrote on the pattern) so I could flip the interfaced band to the back to make a less-fussy front opening

This uses parts from Burda, McCall's, Simplicity,and my own modifications.  It's a potpourri.

And even though I decided that the print was subtle enough that I didn't need to worry about pattern matching across the front opening, hey, whaddaya know, it ended up pretty much pattern matching across the front opening

(it's better than it looks from this angle.  really.)

I know that the more formal a garment, the less visible top stitching there should be, so I restrained myself and only did a bit of edge stitching in a few places, like the side seams.

I pressed all of the hems--measured at 5/8", then half of that folded inside--right after I sewed and pressed the darts, and that was nice to have ready to sew right after sewing and top stitching the side seams, no need to go back and press anything.

Purple thread was still in my machine, and that was as good a match as anything I had.  I didn't want to use black thread, because the roses aren't exactly black (and the off-black thread I have is...very green.)  I was hoping I had some dark pink buttons, but nothing matched well and I turned, surprisingly, to my stash of brown buttons, where this vintage option seemed like a nice choice.

After trying on the shirt to mark the fullest bust level, where a button should go to prevent gapping, I used an expanding sewing gauge to mark placement for the other buttons.  I'm glad I convinced myself to splurge on that thing.

I used the original Burda collar to round off the points of the McCall's collar.  I'm still not great at top stitching around curves, but the purple thread blends in well enough that it's not obvious at a reasonable viewing distance.

I borrowed the sleeves from Simplicity 6401 from 1974.  The Burda sleeves probably would have been fine--they look OK in the pattern envelope photos, but I don't like how they look in the illustrations?  And the Simplicity pattern had been cut by a previous owner, which meant the sleeve pattern pieces were ready to go, so why not?

As always, I pressed the sleeve band edges under before sewing, then sewed the bands to the wrong sides of the sleeves before bringing everything around and edge stitching the pressed edges from the outside.

This is an excessively subtle print for me, isn't it?

I'm still unsure about this project, which is a feeling I get while making a lot of projects that usually turn out fine--or even fabulous--once I try on the finished item...which...I still haven't done with this.  We'll see!