Roads of East Texas
In keeping with the "gathering long loose ends" kind of theme from Shirt #1, it was nice to be able to remember a funny day in 2001 that began the story of this shirt. Sister Dorothy was living in a camp trailer in a campground at Lake Tawakoni that summer. I don't remember just how it happened, but it was with some kind of rebellious spirit that I drove out there and met her to grill some meat and have some kind of Labor Day adventure with her. I was feeling rather inspired to sew just then, and it seemed sewing was a safer topic of conversation than most for us.
At some point, the topic of The Wal-Mart Fabric Connection came up, and I related the story of how in that year I lived in Commerce, Texas (which might also be called "The Year of Exile"), my favorite Friday Night entertainment was hanging out in the Wal-Mart Fabric department. Now that it's been six years or so, I can say I have visited countless Wal-Mart fabric departments in a large number of cities across quite a number of states, and the Commerce store beats them all for $1 per yard fabric. The store on Midway Road in Dallas is pretty darn good. But, Commerce rules.
At the point of this visit to Dorothy, they had built a new, bigger Super Wal-Mart in Commerce that I had never visited. So, it's no surprise after this build-up that we hopped in the car and drove to Commerce for a look-see.
Oh, now I remember. On that back country drive (cue Michele Shock's song, "Roads of East Texas" here), we were on a narrow two-lane strip of asphalt with a double yellow line and no (absolutely no) shoulders. I looked in the rear view mirror at one point, and saw a fire truck rapidly approaching, with lights flashing and siren wailing. Not knowing exactly what to do and not having my wits about me, I jammed on the accelerator and tried to outrun the thing. That was really silly. The road was a little hilly and curvy, and Dorothy was hollering and the fire truck (sirens blaring) was bearing down on us. You would have thought we were teenagers rather than middle aged women. After a few minutes of a wild (probably unsafe) ride, we came upon a couple of farmers in the ditch who seemed to have a little grass fire pretty much doused. The fire truck stopped there, and we sped on, finally gathering our wits and feeling pretty stupid.
Anyway, in this silly frame of mind, we got to Commerce and surveyed the cheap fabric du jour. The thing that's most fun about the Commerce Wal-Mart $1 per yard table is that it's always different. You can't predict. They usually have so much that you have to shift stuff around and dig to see what's there. I bought a few yards of powder blue 100% cotton broadcloth. 
I went home suffering a serious bout of inspiration, and washed it and started cutting a shirt out within hours.
Resigned to the Ziploc
But, stuff happened, and it got put in one of those big Ziploc bags not too long after that.
When I got it out and examined what was what, it became clear this project was going to take some rehabilitation. First and foremost, I had already ironed on the fusible interfacing, and whatever kind of interfacing it was, it was the wrong kind. Gross, stiff, ugly stuff. I don't know if laundering it a few (hundred) times would improve it, but I doubt it.
The pattern used was McCall's #8620, which was the one used for the shirt that inspired The Shirt Fest. Given my recent learning, I thought I might make some adjustments, though that "original" shirt fits pretty well. It wouldn't seem a necessity. Horror upon horrors, though, when I examined it (already cut out, but the pattern pieces still pinned on) to discover it was cut out as a size 8!
I called Sue Ann. "The thing is cut out as a size 8, and the pattern sizing chart says that's a bust measurement of 31 1/2 inches!" She guffawed and asked, "When was the last time you had a 31-inch bust?" I grimmaced, "Yeah, pre-teen, maybe."
I really do wonder what in the world I was thinking. Envision me, over multiple days, shaking my head and distressedly muttering, "WHAT was I thinking?!" And, how many of those McCall's #8620 patterns do I own? That "original" one can't have been made from a size 8 pattern, and I can't imagine that I would have taken a previously used pattern and trimmed it down to a smaller size. But, I have a totally untrimmed pattern like that, too. Hmmph.
Sitting on the living room floor late one night (the solutions to these problems tend to arrive when one is sitting on the floor amid some kind of heap, stack or general disarry in the wee hours), I realized I had enough fabric to cut out new fronts. And, plenty to cut out new facings to replace the ones with the ugly interfacing. I'd leave the other pieces at a size 8 and adjust the fronts of the size 8 pieces to accomodate my larger-than-size-8 front. Brilliant. My shoulders are more like size 8 width, and my back length is probably less than size 8. So, all the other pieces would be just fine.
Herein lies the lesson:
If you're adopting a Fest approach and in the early stages of mastering the sewing of some something, or if you're taking on a sewing project involving some new thing, buy extra fabric. Shirt #1 was actually saved because I could cut out a new set of sleeves after discovering that I had made some kind of hare-brained modification to the first set that made no sense. If it's cheap fabric, why not have an extra yard? If it's not cheap, why not at least get enough to cut out an extra of the largest pattern piece? In this case, I almost wish I had that extra fabric a second time because I'm a little iffy about it being sleeveless. It was a good thing to learn about the sleeveless modifications and all. But, I'm thinking that it's so very lightweight and breezy, I might never wear it by itself in Philadelphia. It's likely to live under a cotton cardigan or linen jacket.
There is danger here of one thing leading to another. The next step is probably a strategy to use up that one yard extra you will always have left over. Maybe it's an offering to the fabric gods. Maybe we can start a list of "One Yard Wonders". Boxer shorts, maybe? Anyone up for a boxer shorts fest? If limited to one yard for boxer shorts, is one likely to impair the boxer shorts wearer by having to scrimp on the size?
I use Sandra Betzina's _Fast Fit_ as a guide a lot. She's the best. I ironed the front piece onto some fusible craft paper stuff, extended the seam at the under arm an extra 3/4 inch or so (because that's at each underarm, it increased the bustline by about 1 1/2 inches) and redrew the armhole a little.
The arm opening is the challenge to the adjustment
Enter another sewing gizmo: the Dritz Styling Curve (http://www.dritz.com/). It's a plastic template. It's a little like a French Curve template you might see among artist's or architect's tools, but the curve on it is specifically an armhole/sleeve curve, and it's got slots 5/8" from the edge to make it easy to draw seam lines. The back of the package (which I saved) shows how to turn a sleeve opening into a sleeveless opening and vice versa.
The catch to this pattern is that while they show a sleeveless view, they don't really modify the opening from the sleeved view. I think that's mainly because the sleeve opening in the sleeved view is actually larger than you'd usually have in a more tailored dress shirt. I've learned to look at sleeves more critically. A more fitted sleeve that has the seam at the shoulder bone has an obviously taller sleeve cap. That also makes it (a little) more difficult to sew. It also makes the fit more critical. Patterns that are supposed to fit everybody require more fudge factor, and they want them to be easier to sew.
Adding some width to the shirt at the bustline, makes the sleeve opening larger. It's already fairly large because of the flat sleeve cap. So, I tried to redraw it a tiny bit so it wasn't a gaping opening. I was pretty conservative in changing it, and it's still plenty, plenty large. Because the shoulders are wide (it's a drop shouldered kind of style), the edge of the shirt is wider than the shoulder. I don't really like that, and I'm looking for a sleeveless pattern that's just right so as to make one that fits right and has more narrow shoulders.
Hooray for the Tools!
I'm into tools and supplies, and this kind of pattern modification project is easier if you keep some butcher paper or some of those sheets of brown packing paper movers use in your sewing stuff. That and the heat bond craft paper stuff get a lot of use in my projects.
More specifically in the sewing tools niche, I stocked up on needles this last week and remembered to install a new needle before beginning this shirt. In talking with the sewing lady at the store, she confirmed my suspicion that I tend to use too heavy a needle. She suggested an 80/12 for general sewing, but I was reading the needle chart at Nancy's Notions (http://www.nancysnotions.com/) site which indicates even that might be a bit too heavy for the light broadcloth of this project. It makes a difference in a shirt where there's going to be a fair amount of topstitching involved. I also read that it's a good idea to change the needle if you hit a pin, even if the needle doesn't break. The strike almost certainly bent the needle a small bit, and it won't stitch a clean and perfect stitch after that.
Doing three shirts in a month has meant doing more buttonholes in a month than ever in history. Luckily, my machine is really good at them. Maybe it was supposed to be a premonition or something that I read somewhere in just the last weeks something that said many people are phobic about buttonholes. The article said that all you needed to do was to sit down and make fifty buttonholes, and then you'd not be phobic anymore. That goes for whatever kind of method your machine requires. Some are barely, if at all, automated. But, if your machine can do a zig-zag stitch and you can change the stitch length and width so that it does a satin stich and bartack kind of thing, you can make it be a buttonhole. Of course, my savvy machine is far smarter than that.
Nevertheless, ever cautious me has made two or three test buttonholes every time, down to cutting them open and testing putting the button through the hole. To do this, I have gone so far as making a little "tool" that I am going to advocate as a "always do" kind of thing. I make a test swatch of a fabric-interfacing-fabric sandwich that's about 2 x 10 inches in size. The layering mimics the layers at a shirt edge and thus the thickness of your real buttonholes. I've also found it's a great little test pad for testing out stitches--whether it's button holes or edge stitching or hem stitching or whatever.
This is a great idea. So great, it made me too confident with my buttonhole prowess. Stay humble.
Here it was, on the third shirt in short order, and in all that time, I hadn't had a single thread jam in the bobbin. I'm a slowpoke with the gas pedal (so to speak), but I was gaining confidence and letting the machine really hum now and then. It so happens that this pattern (McCall's #8620) has a particularly long, curved shirt-tail. So many of the more "modern" ones are just hemmed straight across. One result of the long tail is that it has eight buttons down the front--compared to the three called for in Shirt #2. That means a good deal of buttonhole making practice. I always start at the bottom, just in case it takes a few to get in the groove.
Whizzing right along,
while doing the first side of the third one from the top--arguably the most important of all buttonholes, as it's the one at the bustline--the machine jammed! Froze up. That was all too common with my old machine, but it just doesn't happen with my Husqvarna machine. Uh oh. There was no option but to stop everything, remove the buttonhole foot and its electronic, plug-in cord thing, take out the bobbin and clean everything out. I took out a wad of fuzz and heck knows what. Obviously, that was the problem, and I need to know how to clean that stuff out before it builds up.
But since the buttonholes are so automated, I had to figure out how to pick up the process in the middle.
Enter the user's manual
When I bought this machine, in this world of high tech, they gave me a video "user's manual" rather than a printed, book-like one. I scowled. I guess they decided that nobody reads anymore. Maybe that is true. Perhaps I write these words in vain hope someone still reads. They do produce a printed user's manual, but you have to seek it out and buy it. I did. I bought one on a trip to Columbus a few years ago. It saved the day. You can force it to shift to the next step of the button hole process by pushing a button. So, I measured how much of one side it had done, marked the point it should be complete, lined it up, and pushed the button when it should step throught the process, and all was well. What a relief.
The buttonhole gods, however, were still feeling cranky.
I launched into the next buttonhole--now the one above the bustline-- and started applying the accelorator, and suddenly realized, "WHOA! This thing isn't stopping!" When doing the cleaning out operation, I had turned off the machine (a safer thing when one has one's fingers under the needle), and had forgotten to reprogram the automatic buttonhole length and all. Oh, dear.
Here again is an instance where one might find the extra fabric to save the day. But, but this time, it was the 11th hour (perhaps literally, as the evening grew late) and the extra fabric had been used and was probably beyond replacing since the shirt was finished save buttons and buttonholes.
Gulp.
Very, very carefully I pulled out the buttonhole stitching stitch by stitch. No messy cutting of thread, but clean extraction. Actually, it was quite clean, and within minutes, the error was undetectable. As I had just learned the secrets of resuming the process and stepping it along, the day was saved. It's good to know that taking out a buttonhole is not impossible.
A tool that I must install at the sewing machine is an X-Acto knife. I've been using my very, very sharp little bitty Ghinger scissors to cut my buttonholes, but I think I risk marring or dulling them in the process. That's because I have figured out the best way to cut them accurately, without going through the bartacks at the ends, is to place straight pins across the ends of the buttonholes, protecting the bartacks. The little scissors cut just like an X-Acto, but when they hit the pins, it must be dulling them.
Another difference on this shirt was that I made the buttonholes horizontal instead of vertical. It's true that the pattern (McCall's #8620) has them marked that way. If you look very carefully (grab your handy magnifying glass) at the pattern envelope, it looks like 4 of the six illustrations have vertical buttonholes, but at least 2 have horizontal ones. This set me to digging through the closet and the "to iron" stack, examining every shirt I own to see which have horizonal and which have vertical buttonholes. Only one has horizontal buttonholes, and it's more a blouse than a shirt.
Fabric Affinity
Part of this closer concern for detail was that I began to think more highly of this fabric the longer I worked with it. Straight off the bolt, it was pretty lifeless and stiffened with that whatever-it-is kind of fabric finish that makes it lay straight and flat. The color is subdued. This is the bolt of fabric that can be invisible unless it's about the only thing on the $1 per yard table that isn't screaming objectionably. But, after being handled for some hours, it became soft and sweet. Still subdued, but unassumingly so. Its texture is almost handkerchief linen.
It's funny how at $1 per yard, you can start a project and think of it flippantly. You can take a risk and rationalize that if it goes badly, it's no big loss to pitch it out in the trash. It was just a summertime adventure in the backwoods of East Texas where entertainment comes cheap. It has some educational value to have figured something out that doesn't work, if nothing else. But, after handling it for several hours, and overcoming buttonholes run amok and armhole adjustment heroics, $1 per yard of fabric can become priceless and irreplaceable.
After these inevitable hitches and obstacles, it was clear that just because it's fewer pattern pieces, it's not necessarily easier or much quicker. You may not have a collar, but you have a neck facing that probably takes as much time to get nicely attached to the other facings, attached to the neck, understitched, edge finished, etc. In terms of numbers of stitches taken by the machine, it's probably less to do a collar. Well, maybe not less, but equal. As for the sleeves versus sleevless, the last two shirts with sleeves seemed less of a hassle. But, I brought some of that on myself. That adjusting of the bustline made the sleeve opening a little different size. That meant it had a sleeve facing (which is simply a rectangular, bias-cut strip about 1 1/2" by 15 inches), instead. I wonder if all or most shirts use armhole facings like that. My estimation of the size difference seemed all wrong, so I went back to about the original size. It finally worked, though the notches and marked dots never made a bit of sense, and not before I sewed and resewed each armhole multiple times. Working out the desired amount of ease between the two and stitching around it without getting some other part of the garment stitched into the seam was such a silly challenge. Maybe I had been sewing too long that day. I stopped and took it up again the next day, and it still took a long time to get that one right.
Given my previous french seam results and the fact that the broadcloth was earning my respect while being ever so easy to ravel, I decided to french seam everything. Obviously, "everything" is a short list when the only seams are side seams and shoulder seams. Still, it looks rather like a classy sleeveless handkerchief linen shirt I used to have, which is sweet. There's topstitching along the front edges and around the armholes, and with the match of the thread being particularly good, it's very nice.
Call 'em "Cover Buttons"
By this point I had decided the shirt would look good with self fabric cover buttons. Yes, I grew up calling them "covered buttons", and they are button forms covered with fabric. But, the package calls them "Cover Buttons", which seems rather like the fact that everyone I have ever heard ask for the card in my wallet that declares me authorized to drive a car has asked for my "driver's license" while the card itself (in whatever state of the union) says it is a "Driver License". So, it is with Cover Buttons.
The cover buttons are 7/16" buttons, and that's the smallest ones I've seen. It's noteworthy that the 7/16" buttons are made differently than the larger sizes. They have "teeth" on the inside edge of the button form, and the shank by which you sew it to the garment is permanently attached to the covered part, not to the backing part. I like that better than the other where you could lose your "cover" part, and be left with just a metal backing part. I think I would like the flat style rather than the "half ball" style that is by far most common, but it's rather tough to even find the flat style. I have never found the little plastic covering "cup" tool in the 7/16" size, but I used a 1/2" one without much trouble. It's worth doing it in the plastic cup thing rather than just using a hard tabletop because I flattened the face of one of them without much effort before I started using the plastic cup. I'm not yet totally convinced of their durability. I use a small seam ripper as the primary tool to poke the fabric inside the cover and get it to catch on the little metal teeth. Maybe some super glue on the backing would be worthwhile. But I have some extra fabric and extra buttons, so they can be replaced. If too many have to be replaced, it's not that tough to sew 8 plastic buttons on.
I also learned that with a fabric as openly woven and light as this broadcloth, you need to interface it before cutting out the circle of fabric you'll use to cover the button. Otherwise, the shine of the metal shows through. It also makes it easier and less slippery to work with. I hadn't realized before that the circle of fabric is simply a cirle with a diameter twice that of the button. That makes me think I'll install one of those simple grade-school pencil-holding compasses at the sewing table.
At some point way back when, it occurred to me that cover buttons might also be an opportunity for some machine embroidery designs. These 7/16" buttons are rather small for designs, but still, it might be a cute idea. In fact, it could be a very small but very charming detail. Besides that, I happened to whip up some cufflinks for a shirt I have with french cuffs this last week by sewing two nice buttons having a button shank together with a loop of thread. I like french cuffs, and I've thought a set or two should be in The Shirt Fest. It seems like embroidering designs to go on cover buttons and making cuff links with them would fit right into that.
Snaps Maybe?
In digging through my buttons and button making supplies, I also came upon quite a collection of decorative snaps. In high school I had a shirt with snaps like that--a more western style shirt that my friend Cara made for me. I'll think about that idea.
Even though the fabric is rather lightweight, I used Pellon's shirt interfacing, and like the results. Once again, I think that using bad interfacing probably made me leery of interfacing and likely to opt for interfacing that's too lightweight. Long live Pellon.
I finished the hem by simply turning up 1/4" and using a "multiple zig-zag" stitch. It stitches three, zigs, stitches three, zags, etc. It looks alittle nicer than just a zig-zag stitch, but it's not very fancy. Maybe I should have turned it up twice and straight stitched it or tried the rolled hemmer foot on it. That's an experiment for next time.
Though sewing this shirt was over just a few days, I visited multiple fabric stores, bought another shirt pattern (Burda's version, this time) and even bought some cheap Wal-Mart fabric for a skirt. Alas, even with a 3-shirt month, more fabric is coming in the door than is going out the door!
The exciting find on the shopping front is some "sunflower" buttons. Three or four years ago I bought some brightly printed fabric for a shirt-like top that's rather more bright and bold than my usual choice. It's got red and orange and yellow sunflowers with a background of green leaves and tan. The sunflower buttons I found were about 1" sunflowers of red, orange and yellow, exactly like the fabric! Perfect! I got some tan fabric at the same time to make pants to go with the shirt, but it seems a little too lightweight. In fact, I'm thinking it would make a great tan shirt. However, I have cut out another short sleeve seersucker shirt, and I bought a nice piece of lavendar shirt fabric early in May that I'd like to sew.
Today I opened up two of the big plastic tubs of fabric that Sue Ann and I cleaned out from Mother's stock, and such an exercise is always stunning. Perhaps I will have to rename my SLOG (Sewing Log) something like "The Red Shirt Fest" or the "Red and Navy Review" given the number of pieces of red and navy in stock. That might be fun: 12 red shirts in 12 months. There must be a lot of stories behind those pieces of fabric. It also made me think that it would be smart to keep a kind of inventory log, telling the stories of when and where and why a piece was purchased as well as what dreams it aroused and what plans were made for it. Sometimes I clearly remember that I pre-washed a piece, and sometimes I don't know. Sometimes I remember the whole story--like the day of the trip to Commerce with Dorothy--and sometimes I am utterly clueless about where I got a piece of fabric or what I intended to do with it. Some of my fabric is labelled as to the yardage of the piece, but it would be great to label yardage and fiber content when they were purchased.
Obviously, it could be a full time job just to manage the fabric stock!
And now the weather has turned rather chilly, and I am more inclined to make long sleeved shirts than anything else.
It took 30 years to make this shirt. Well, the fabric has been either in my possession or my mother's possession that long.
It's close to the same (so close you wouldn't notice; the only difference seems to be a little change in the shape of the sleeve opening).
In other words, you would cut out four front pieces instead of two, so the entire front would be two layers thick. That would be nice for a thin, sheer fabric. My lawn fabric is certainly thin enough, but it's dark enough that it's not at all see-through.
I think the collar is a little wide. When I make the pattern again, I think I'll narrow it a tad. After making shirts with a really flat sleeve cap, this one seems a lot more steep. It fits better.
The instructions are a little different, and I especially appreciate seeing a different way to do things. Betzina prescribes finishing the bottom edge early in the process, and advises french seams throughout. I did that, and it produced great results. Wait a minute, I flat-felled the side seams and shoulder seams. Using tiny stitches and a finer needle with my great machine produced lovely results.
Who is Margaret Islander?
The sewing world is really a fairly small family. You're just supposed to know the big names. I admit to being baffled when I was reading Sandra Betzina's instructions and multiple times she said something like "a la Margaret Islander". Actually, the instructions she was giving were not making one bit of sense to me. I went so far as to photocopy diagrams and text as I was thinking I'd post them here and ask if anybody had a clue.
This was mostly while doing the collar. One reason I chose this pattern was because I've come to strongly prefer the collar band and collar construction in a shirt, and here were instructions and pictures that were totally confounding.
I dug out the "pre-3-hour Shirt" pattern and analyzed its collar and collarband instructions. I dug out the Classig 3-hour shirt pattern and anlyzed its instructions. Amazing but true, the instructions got worse when they updated the 1995 pattern to the 1998 version. Of all the choices, I think the oldest one is the best.
Mark Everything
Still, if you suffer through a few of them the geometry of it eventually sinks in. I do remember a shirt making adventure of Sue Ann's that required cutting out multiple collar bands (and even a trip to buy more fabric) and involved a sustained period of yelps and howls. The first and best advice is to mark every mark and notch and whatever clearly and thoroughly, including right side and wrong side of fabric and up and down and "this side connects to shirt" and "don't sew this edge" if necessary.
I figured out the 
When Shirt 1 happened, it was suddenly so warm that making short-sleeved seersucker shirts seemed urgent. In the flurry of on-sale seersucker buying, I cut out the purple plaid seersucker almost at the same time I cut out the orange stripe. What is the sewer's equivalent of buyer's remorse? Cutter's remorse? After I cut it out, I had a sinking feeling that I'd been much too careless about planning for the plaids. And, because I was so hot (literally) to make cool summer shirts, I'd bought "barely on sale" (after all the $1.00 a yard fabric I've bought, regular sale prices don't seem good enough!) fabric. So the fabric probably cost me $12 instead of $3! With all the heaps and stacks of fabric and junk in the vicinity of my sewing machine, it's not too difficult to hide a little bunch of too-quickly cut out fabric. So, it got stashed under some other stuff, and I considered something else.
Luckily, Wal-Mart had the right color of broadcloth, and for 90-some cents I got half a yard and my collar matching problem was solved. The solid collar thing looks pretty good. I'm a little concerned that it will become a trademark. Not quite enough fabric for the pattern? Slap on a solid color collar. Tough plaids to match? Slap on a solid color collar. Disgusting interfacing gooed up the first collar and no reserve fabric left? Slap on a solid color collar. I wonder why we don't see half the people walking down the street wearing solid color collar.
