Shirt Choice

I had some fabric that I had bought as a clearance bolt--I thought it was something I got when the local Hancock Fabrics went out of business in 2007, but it's not in my photos from then.  I did use some of it in a project photographed in 2013, but, beyond that, all I really know is that I'd had it for a long time, and I originally had a lot of it.

I recently decided it would be good for a shirt.  But...long sleeve or short sleeve?

I decided on long sleeve, grabbed McCall's 6613, and got to work.

For the most part, there's nothing new to say about this project that I haven't said in other projects using McCall's 6613.

I've gotten fairly familiar with the assembly of this--or, rather, the way I choose to assemble it.

Pressing every possible edge that can be pressed before beginning assembly, sewing a lot of things on the wrong side then flipping the already-pressed edge around to the outside and edge stitching, attaching the yoke with the burrito method, and making faux tower plackets on the sleeves are my standard deviations from the pattern, as well as the fact I've made a modified sleeve pattern piece that merges the two original pieces and eliminates the superfluous "not how a two-part sleeve works" seam.

I did have an annoying time with the buttons, and I'm really not sure why the machine kept feeding the thread down to get wound in the wrong places in the bobbin area. They're the same buttons I used for another recent shirt,  so it's not that they were so thick that they messed up the tension.  I probably should have given up and hand-sewn the buttons, but...yeah, I'm not going to do that.  They were all machine sewn eventually.

I cut the yoke pieces on the cross grain by choice, instead of being forced by fabric restrictions, or by being forced to cut them with the grain because of print direction.

Back pleat to the inside, as the pattern wants--this is another place I deviate based on the whims of the project.

Finished!

...well...actually...

I tried it on and the sleeves were long.  Like...4"/10cm too long.  Which is a problem I've had with this pattern in the past, and I thought I had modified the traced-off sleeve pattern to reflect that.  Now I absolutely have done that, to the benefit of future shirts.  This one, though...?

I was not willing to re-do the cuffs and plackets, so I picked out all the stitching and serging at the armscyes, measured down 4" from the top of the sleeves, then used tailor's chalk to trace the sleeve cap lower on the inside of the sleeves. Because of the sleeve taper, I lost about a half inch on either edge of the sleeve cap shape, which I figured (correctly) wouldn't be a problem because of the idea that sleeve caps should have little to no ease.  I hadn't removed the sleeve stitching, so I carefully cut away the excess fabric at the top of the sleeves, then back tacked over the now-cut end of the stitching.  That left me with sleeves ready to be set in the round into the armscyes--not my favorite thing to do, but that lack of ease made it relatively easy.

And now it's done!

...but I should probably go back and shorten the sleeves on a few other shirts...