Happy new year, sweet friends. I have some ambitious plans up my sleeve for the coming year, and I've always been inexplicably more fond of even numbers than odd numbers, so I think 2014 should be a good'un. I didn't participate in all the bloggers' "top five"/reflection posts, but to seal up 2013, I thought I would share this plaid flannel shirt I made Corey in December. Last year was the year of the button-down, as I made five shirts and one shirt-dress for myself and four shirts for Corey. This one is definitely the most beloved.
The button placket IS straight!
I think we all know there aren't great men's shirt patterns out there, so I've built this pattern using trace-offs of RTW shirts (for the front, back, yoke, collar/stand) and the sleeve and cuffs from Burda 7045. The Burda pattern seems to be okay because it's actually a slim modern cut, but it didn't have the back pleat or curved hem that Corey likes, and the collar options are somehow confusing.
I think I'm pretty close to achieving his "perfect" pattern, but the sleeves on this one puff out a bit too much above the cuff. I also still cheat and simply serge all the seams instead of flat-felling or whatever, but I think I should at least do French seams because he always rolls up his cuffs.
I was short on fabric so I had to cut the back yoke on the cross-grain, and the inner yoke out of a striped cotton sheet in my stash. The middle vertical stripe on the yoke therefore isn't the same width as the middle vertical stripe on the back, and the whole back print is kinda crooked (just now noticing, gah!) but O'WELL. The plaid matching on the front, sleeves and sides is pretty accurate so I'm happy.
The fabric is a cotton flannel shirting from JoAnn's. They do tend to have attractive tartan plaids there. Honestly I wanted to make something for myself with this fabric, but he practically pounced on it the moment he saw it on my sewing table, and he's just so damn charming. I ain't mad, though, because his wardrobe is only a fraction of the size of mine so he actually needed another shirt in the winter rotation.
Last week Corey flew back to Philly from Louisville during the winter weather chaos. His connecting flight was canceled and so they shuffled him around and got him on a late flight to a different PA airport. Not surprisingly, his baggage did not show up. They told him it'd be delivered the next day, but of course it wasn't. Days went by, and airline phone robots kept telling him that the bag had not yet been located. All I could think about was those beloved handmade shirts (four or five!), trapped in a cold, dark suitcase, abandoned in airport limbo. Losing his favorite handmade clothes all at once would mean losing a large part of his carefully curated (and limited) wardrobe, which is devastating enough. It would also mean that all MY laborious hours of love spent hunched over the cutting table and stepping on pins and slicing my hand with a rotary cutter would be a total, utter waste.
But the story ends happily because the suitcase finally arrived after a week. Has an airline ever lost any of your baggage full of handmade items?!
Anyway, that's the shirt. Does big-bearded Corey in a red plaid shirt remind you of anyone?
I smell a Halloween costuuuume. I guess I'll be the ox sidekick because I'm such a babe.
