The itchy, see through, floppy fabric Perfect Shirt

Donna, my awesome Tuesday night student :) , chose this  shirt pattern to make for our current project together. We looked through my patterns and  this one really appealed to her. I have had it in my stash for a  while, I just hadn't gotten around to making it yet. This shirt has no buttons or zippers so again she avoids closures of any kind (The next item will have a zipper. Or buttons or anything. You can't avoid them forever, Donna! :) :) ) I liked all of the options that the pattern came with.

 I like to have made a pattern made up at least once before I teach it, to work out any issues  it may have.  So I got to making a shirt real quick before the next weeks lesson with Donna. 

I made a shirt but Donna is converting the pattern over to a nightgown. She has planned for it to be white eyelet , much longer and  flared out at the bottom. She is using the flutter sleeves for extra comfortableness.  ( Is that a word- comfortableness? Did I just make up a word?) 

I did not make a muslin with this.  I'm such a risk taker! No not really. This pattern didn't have any darts or any thing I needed to work out, so  I just fit as I sewed. I added some extra room to the front gather under the inset when I cut it out and moved the gather mark up the neckline.  I took up a lot in   the shoulders and the back seam .  That's it. 

 The fabric I found  I really like. It is flowy and very nice for spring and summer.   It was also   sooooo flip floppy when working with it.  I could not get it to stay in place when cutting , or pinning, or any of the process. 

For the inset, I used an  iron on  tear away stabilizer applied to the wrong side of the fabric,  to apply the lace.  I tried it without stabilizer on a test piece and it slip-slided all over the place. I couldn't get the lace straight. Because there are little stripes in the fabric, it is very obvious when the lace was crooked. 

Soooooo I iron on the stabilizer and stitched the vintage lace on with tiny zig zag stitches. They disappear nicely into lace. 

The lace is vintage lace collected over the years from thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales and who knows where else I got it from. I have had it forever. I use little pieces in projects here and there.  

 I tried it on after I got the sleeves basted in and was going to wear it during a lesson one morning to test it out before I finished off the seams, but I ended up tearing it off after a few minutes . It itched so bad!!!    It was insanely itchy!! There are little tiny clear threads running through the fabric which gives it a really  neat tiny shimmer in the sun.  However those little tiny clear threads are evil little imitators. Any cut edge of fabric  that touched my skin  had those little tiny threads in it. Sooooooo each seam in this shirt is either french seams or bias tape / binding covered. Every one. Not a raw edge anywhere. Even  where the bubble on the end of the sleeve attaches- all covered in binding. So my quick  little shirt which should have taken no time at all took a few days.

Inside the shirt, the seam allowances are covered in bias  tape binding.

     The edges of the neckline are in binding of the same fabric but packaged bias tape could be used in place of  it and look awesome. I pulled out some black bias tape to see if I could do it on this shirt but  the blacks were different .  :(  However, on Donna's nightgown, white bias tape will be used.  This will speed up the construction time on this a lot.

     The sleeves were super puffy on the first go round. I had added some extra room in the sleeves for my massive shoulders  and that created a some super pouf at the  top sleeve seam. I risked the itchiness and put it back on to take this  picture of the sleeves before I took them off.  Those sleeves were  costumy. I wanted a vintage feel to the shirt but sometimes too many details can look like  a costume.

      I like the bubble a the bottom of the sleeve.  I wasn't sure about it when I was making it but after wearing it a couple of times- it is very comfortable.

Here are  the sleeves getting ready to have the binding attached and some top edge  'pouf ' removed. .

      I took pictures outside this time as it is a black shirt and those haven't been showing up too well in photos inside my dark dungeon house. Here is the shirt in full sun so you can see all the details ... and right through it.

Look Dad! I am on the Internets in a see-through shirt!


When the photos loaded up on the computer I realized this shirt is see through. (My husband: Yea I noticed that, I thought you knew.  Me: Noooooooooooo I did not know it was this see through. Thanks for the heads up on that one,  honey :) )  And the majorly see through part isn't even on good stuff- like my boobs. :) :)  It highlights my stomach.  Not groovy.  In the wearings after these photos were taken, I wore a black undershirt. Problem solved. :)

This  is as glamorous as it gets, standing in the front yard, in the overgrown winter garden, in a see through shirt whilst the elderly neighbor walks his dog past.

I love this shirt. After solving the  King Henry sleeve pouf and the Itchy and Scratchy  problems it has become the Perfect Shirt.  It is extremely comfortable and  I have worn it  many times now.