The last trip to the craft thrift store saw me bring home an obnoxious doll print and a madras that coordinates so incredibly well with that doll print that I strongly suspect they were donated from the same stash. I put them together for another McCall's 6613 (with all my usual deviations from the pattern as given.)
When I say a print is obnoxious, I mean it. I am also cackling gleefully while saying it.
I'm not sure if I've mentioned, but, in my intense desire to not have a print element repeat on either side of the center front opening, I've started cutting the shirt fronts with the center edge right next to the fold (after also only folding enough fabric to cut that pattern piece.) Since there's going to be a band, I'm not worrying about pattern matching, just keeping that repeat from happening on either side. (I know I don't need to worry about that, as a lot of shirts do have that repeat, but it still bothers me about my own work. So! I'm happy I figured out cutting along the fold like this.)
I didn't put much effort into cutting the madras straight, or aligned. A lot of the pieces ended up aligning really well anyway, although some were just far enough from straight that I re-cut them, actually paying attention to the stripe alignment that time. The result is most obvious in how the collar stripes line up with the yoke stripes.
I also cut the collar, collar stand, yoke,and cuffs on the cross grain, and it was noticeable (and nice) to have relatively little stretch along the gently curved edges when sewing them all together.
The front bands and mock tower plackets were cut on the grain.
Because of how I cut them, I didn't get stripes perfectly aligned from one half of the shirt to the other, but they won't be seen directly side by side enough for the misalignments to be obvious, so it's not worth fretting about.
As usual, I pressed every edge possible before making the first stitch, including the hem.
It's so nice to have that pressed and ready to go once the side seams are sewn, no need to go maneuver the nearly-complete shirt all around the ironing board.
I unroll the pressed edges to sew the end of the side seams, clip the end of the seam allowance off at an angle to reduce bulk inside that folded hem, then roll it back up and stitch. Serging happens, too--I initially thought I'd need to change to a darker overlocker thread, since the shirt print is so dark, but I decided, meh, the back of the print is light enough that I could go ahead and use the white thread already in the machine.
Here's a better view of the print, since the first few pictures I took had some blurring that I didn't catch until editing, but I had taken this photo anyway, not intending to use it here, but just to show how ridiculous the print is on social media.
And the back!
This is one of those projects that I had a lot of high expectations for, which meant it immediately started to feel like a let down, and work on it slowed significantly. I decided to put only five buttons on the front opening and one on each cuff, instead of seven (smaller) buttons on the front and at least two on each cuff (someday I'll finally put a button on each tower placket, too), and that made finishing it go a bit better. And of course I used some of my beloved faux horn buttons, because what's a little more color variation to a print mix like this?
I'm currently planning for my next few projects to use the rest of these fabrics, although not necessarily mixed together.
No comments:
Post a Comment