I’m nearing completion on my shirt. Tuesday night, I worked on the sleeves. And then worked on the sleeves. After some other sewing, I continued work on the sleeves.
Those blasted sleeves, I thought they’d be the death of me!
First off, the pattern has gathered shoulders. Fine. I figured out how to baste with my machine (increase the stitch-length! Dur!) and I gathered the bodice. I decided to skip the shoulders at first and do the cuffs. Oops, the cuffs. There was a separate pattern piece for these. Cut to me digging through the pattern tissues and cutting some more fabric. There was also the little part that said “interfacing”, but as I said the other day, interfacing confuses me. Plus, my fabric wasn’t of the flimsy variety and I felt it could stand up to the button hole. And also, to last time I tried to use fusible interfacing, I melted it to my iron.
The end of the sleeve that is attached to the cuff is also gathered. Fine. I do this and then get confused by the directions that tell you to sew the cuff on, then gather it. This clearly was not going to work, the cuff piece wasn’t as wide as the sleeve was. Yikes, I was regretting my option A sleeves at that point. But! I did the gathering first and pinned and re-pinned several times and it all worked out. There are the cuffs in the picture before I sewed them to the inside. Ingenious, this pattern, the cuffs turned under hide the seams of the sleeve on the inside. After the cuffs were on, I found some nice buttons in the scrapbooking stash and used my handy-dandy, incidentally easy-to-use, button-hole foot and program to actually sew on the buttons (oh, how I love this feature).
On to the shoulders. Bah, this was also a lot of pinning and gathering and fitting and swearing and crappy sewing. But! The shoulders got attached and there are only one to two puckers per shoulder in addition to the gathering that is supposed to be there. I must say, I am getting better with the whole intuitiveness about right sides together, etc, that is involved with sewing garments.
So, the shirt is put together. I tried it on and, lo, it fits! The sleeves actually come to my wrists, a little shorter than I would normally wear, but they look nice. I also can push them up on my forearms, which is also a nice look. There is an issue with the bodice: the seam under the bodice doesn’t go under my bust where I think it belongs. I don’t know what’s up with my boobs, but I used the size that I measured for. And it’s not like they hang low or anything. It isn’t that noticeable or bothersome to me, and I really like that the top doesn’t gape to reveal my entire bosom when I lean over. So I’ll take that compromise.
There is also and issue with gaping on top the shoulders around the neckline. I pinned the fabric down to alleviate this and I’ll sew and new shoulder seam.
While trying on the top, I folded under the bottom to see where the hem would look good. Previously, I thought I wanted the longer length in my top, but having it on and folding it under demonstrate that I really didn’t need the length… it was too much. So that’s all that’s left: cutting off the excess fabric and hemming the bottom. Then I’ll have a totally original shirt for 20$ and my hard labor.
