Save the Cat

I thought I'd take a break from sewing buttoned shirts and sew a quick woven pullover shirt.  I cut the tissue for Simplicity 2211, the Lisette Market pattern

 The pattern cutting layout showed size 12 of the blouse folding the selvedges to the center and cutting the front and back on the fold that way.  Since I cut as much as I can on a large narrow piece of cardboard on top of my ironing board (yes, the narrow area can be irritating, but it's better than floundering around on the floor), I decided I'd fold the selvedges to the center and cut the pieces one at a time.

I cut the front first and transferred all the marks for the darts, then folded the other selvedge to the center and placed the back pattern piece and 

oh

it didn't fit?

After a few minutes of wondering if I had somehow folded things incorrectly, I thought to measure the fabric width.

It's a yard of very nice, surprisingly shirt weight Halloween print I got from JoAnn in 2017

so I was shocked to discover it was only 40" wide.

Did it shrink that much when I washed it? In only one direction?

Did it matter at that point?

So I considered my options.  The obvious was to add a contrast strip of fabric in the center back and proceed from there.  I can't explain why, but I absolutely did not want to do that.

I thought of cutting a new back from the already-cut front, and creating a button front with contrast areas, eventually remembering good ol' New Look 6217.  I made so many shirts from that pattern in the early 2000s--even though it was cut in a now-too-small size, I kept it when I purged patterns when I gained weight.  Now, I have lost weight, but not enough to put me in my early 2000s size, so I decided to combine the two-part front aspect of New Look 6217 with my current basic shirt pattern, the modified Burda 7831

I settled on adding a contrast asymmetrically, and making the collar and (hidden) front bands from the contrast print.  I poked through my stash and settled on a tiny floral stretch poplin, then started cutting quickly before I could second guess myself and here we are

Once I had everything cut out (and there were some...seam allowance encroachments involved), assembly was completely straightforward

So of course I double top stitched everything, and did construction my way--including pressing as many edges as possible before parts were anywhere near assembled--so probably made it all way more complicated than it needed to be. I'm very happy with the result and regret nothing.

(The stitching on that collar point really is...pointy, it's just at a weird foreshorten-y angle in the photo.)

I had several options for buttons, including some that match the ground color in the floral print perfectly, but my love of fake horn buttons led me to these that, from a distance, strongly resemble the cat's markings. (There is only one single cat face in this print, flipped and repeated.)

I finally changed my worn serger fixed lower blade, too!  So the serged seam allowances are back to smooth and non-ragged.  I was ready to change the moving upper blade, but it wasn't needed.  I have the spare upper blade in reserve for the future.

Did the bottom and sleeve hems with my current technique of pressing up 5/8", then pressing half of that down, then stitching close to that fold from the inside of the garment and not worrying about if the depth was perfectly even.

When cutting the back from the abandoned pattern's front, I had to make the choice of having the new neckline be able to be cut completely, but lose some of the overall shirt length, or maintain the entire length but have to fill in the original pattern's neckline.

I went with "fill in the neckline."  I cut the curve a bit wider than the original neckline, so the edge of this faux yoke would meet the princess-to-shoulder seams on the front.

I'm not entirely happy with the shape of the curve, but I was working with what I was working with.

Oh! I used the short sleeves from the New Look pattern, too, and I think I'll make a copy of those to keep with the Burda, because I like their angle more than previous short sleeves used for this pattern.

I think I recovered this shirt nicely from the initial problem, even if it's a design choice I probably wouldn't've made otherwise.  In fact, I think it can be fun to do things not quite the way my brain wants to do them by default.  Keeps it interesting, y'know?