It Is Finished!

The Male Pattern Boldness Men's Shirt Sewalong, that is. At least for me. I finished both shirts that were on the plan by February 15th. That gives me 13 days to finish my dress/fluffer for the Vintage Sewalong.

Originally, I'd planned to give a blow-by-blow of how my progress lined up with the MPB sewalong, but since I'm not using the Negroni *and* my shirt choice is constructed slightly differently, it just made sense to finish up and then post.

First things first! I sewed a flat fell seam or three for the first time EVER. And while I think it's a nice way to finish a seam, I can't see myself doing it with twitchy fabrics. I WOULD make the seam allowance deeper, though, because 5/8" isn't really enough for me to work with and I have TINY fingers.

The short sleeve version is vintage fabric and it's plaid. Now *some* people would say not to take on plaid as a first attempt because it's so "hard" to work with. I found the opposite to be true. I LOVE working with plaid. Why? Because if the colors are bold enough and the blocks clear enough, it's like a freaking AAA TripTik pointing the way you're supposed to do. Sure, you have to exercise caution when cutting, but no more so IMNSHO than with regular fabric. Of course, I'm the girl who obsesses over pattern matching on EVERY fabric, so plaid was WAY easier for me.

I LOVE the way it turned out, don't you? There's only one little visible flaw. See if you can guess what it is! The pocket had to be pieced because I ran out of fabric.


Mad About Plaid Men

The next one I did was the long sleeve version. The fabric cost me $8 and the buttons $12. The fabric is a spandex/cotton(?) blend. It did NOT take well to being ironed/pressed. It just wouldn't hold it's shape unless I cranked the iron up to high. It's got a LOVELY drape, though. And it's soft, so my better half SHOULD wear it. He better.

The pattern on this one is also a plaid, but it's so tiny it was worthless to try and use as a guideline. This fabric also shrank and went off grain like CRAZY. I mean for REALZ. I had to lop off a TON on either edge after washing and *hanging* dry. God only knows what it would've looked like had it gone in the dryer.

Here's a nice close up of the cuff. I did the continuous lap but screwed it up a teeny bit when setting in the sleeve to the cuff. And yes, those buttons ought to have been gold-plated for how much they cost/cost over fabric, but they were totally worth it because they just MADE the shirt.


Fancy dancy buttons!

The one thing I LOVED about this pattern is that the sleeves are sewn in using the flat insertion method. When they're cut properly, this method is BY FAR the easiest nicest method for making sure the sleeves are eased properly. I hate setting in sleeves the *other* way with the fire of 10,000 suns.

As for whether or not I'd make this pattern again? Oh heck, yeah. I LOVE it. It's easy to put together, didn't cause me to curse the pattern piece gods OR the pattern instruction sheet gods, so it's all good. The deal is, you HAVE to have great fabric to pull this shirt off. Don't go with wimpy fabric that is boring. Next time I might do the yoke/collar in a contrast to the main shirt/sleeves just because I can. Which reminds me, I'm making up a much smaller version for my son's 5th birthday on St. Patrick's Day.

I've done a little research and it looks like this style of shirt was pretty popular in the 50s. It's been called an "Italian" shirt on an Advance pattern from the time period. It was made for girls, boys, women and men. The flat front shirt was also pretty popular as well with an asymetrical front yoke. I'm so on that.