I got this cloth from Joann probably 8 years ago, at a time when the kiddo would still wear button up shirts and I had not yet realized that making something that complicated, that would be outgrown so quickly, was not an enjoyable application of my time. So, I had several single yards of fabric he'd picked out for possible shirts, languishing in the fabric stash. I destashed most of them earlier this year, but held on to a space cat print.
I just finished using it to make a button up shirt for me.
On the one hand, I'm surprised I could eke out most of the pieces in me-size from a single yard with a "directional enough for me to want to treat as one way" print--I cut only two pieces from a contrast gingham. On the other hand, the way I eked out some of it was, in retrospect, not optimal.
This is again my Burda 7831-based hodgepodge. As with most of my 7831 hodgepodge shirts, the print is much more of a feature than the construction.
And I do want to note: a new fabric with such a complex print would very likely be digital, but this is old enough that it was still screen printed. Look at how many colors it has:
10 and 14 are a little off-register, and 2, 8, and 14 were printed a bit heavy. I like seeing the variations.
This very busy fabric, with lots of browns, is a natural to coordinate with faux horn buttons (not that I need much of an excuse to use faux horn buttons in general.)
Since I have made this configuration of pattern pieces several times now, the construction on this shirt was extremely straightforward.
Except for the part I messed up when cutting out...
Since I was squeezing this out of a single yard of 45 fabric, and treating it as a one way print, the space where I fit the sleeves was a bit too narrow to fit the sleeves pattern piece on full-width.
"No problem," I thought. "As long as the sleeve cap is the same length, it will fit into the armscye and everything will be fine!" So I squished the hem edge down enough to fit on the fabric, making the sleeve cap a bit more acutely rounded, but not changing the sleeve cap length, and cutting the sleeves out confidently.
And not realizing until much later that I had ended up making the sleeves really narrow. In retrospect, I should have laid the sleeve pattern piece out flat, then pieced on some more fabric at the back edge, since there were plenty of odd bits of fabric that would have been large enough for that. Sure, there would have been an extra seam, but it would have been inconspicuous and, more important, easy.
What I ended up doing...well, it is inconspicuous, and wasn't really that hard, but, ugh, I still would have liked not to have had to have done that. (Yay English verb tenses. Anyway.)
I picked out the sleeve hem ends, and side seams going into the body side seams just a bit, then added a small triangle gusset to expand the sleeve at the hem. I finger pressed it before stitching the hem edges back, and it's kind of a mess, but. As usual. No-one should be looking while I'm wearing this.
I did have to cut the front bands on the cross grain, but the directionality on the print is such that it being turned 90° isn't obvious. And there just wasn't enough contiguous fabric to cut the inner collar stand and under collar pieces from the feature print, so a gingham was called in to help.
It makes a nice contrast inside the collar stand, and isn't really visible at all on the bottom of the collar.
This shirt is far from perfect, but, it was never supposed to be perfect, so that's no problem.
Most importantly: what it is is finished.
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