And Another New Shirt

Finished at last! This is McCalls 5471, the "White Shirt". Except mine is not white.

I made view A, the plain ruffle cuffed version. I wanted to make view B, the Bubble sleeve, but I ran out of fabric and had to "make it work." If you don't have this pattern, run out and get it ASAP! It is so easy. It's one of McCalls new patterns with the separate front pieces for different cup sizes and it is great. I made a 16 from shoulder to waist with the C cup front pieces, and tapered out to an 18 from waist to hip. I really could have just made a straight 16 because there seems to be plenty of ease through the hem. When I make it again (I already have two fabrics picked out) I will cut a 14 through the shoulder and a 16 everywhere else. I used the size 20 sleeve because I need extra room for my large arms, but I had trouble easing the sleeve in. There was just too much fabric and I got puckers. So for the next version, I will use the 16 sleeve and slash and add tissue to the middle of the sleeve. That should take care of the puckers.

I used a lightweight quilting cotton for this top. I'd had my eye on this fabric for a couple of months, and last week when I made a trip to the fabric store, it was on sale, so I thought why not make a cute shirt. I like the colors. The brown, taupe, and peacock blue pattern have a kind of William Morris/Art Noveau vibe going on. I quickly fell out of love with this fabric when I went to cut it out, though. Once I got it home, it seemed kind of thin for a quilting cotton. But I thought, what the heck? It'll be okay for a shirt. I machine washed and dried like I always do. Then I tore the fabric at one end to get the crosswise grain straight and I pressed it. When I laid it out to cut it, I could not get the fabric to lay straight to save my life. If I lined up the torn edge, the center fold was off. and if I got the center fold to look straight and lay flat, then the torn edge was off. So I finally just got it smoothed out and straight as I could and started pinning. There was one section of the fabric that seemed to be wider than the rest. I couldn't measure from the selvedge to the grainline and get my pattern piece straight. I just gave up and lined it up with the print rather than the selvedge. The shirt turned out okay, and no one will ever know what I time I had, but it sure gave me a headache.

In other news this weekend, I got the black gauze dress done, and I'm working on the matching shrug. I hope to have pictures soon. While at the fabric store last week, I wanted to get a black invisible zipper for the dress, but they were out. I was really irritated, thinking I'd have to wait to work on the dress, but then I found this:

It's a roll of invisible zippers! There are 4.5 yards on here and twelve zipper pulls, for ten dollars and change! I was able to get the black dress done, and I still have plenty of zipper for 11 more projects. How cool is that?

I'm off to sew. The black shrug has to be narrow hemmed all the way around. I'm also going to cut out a new project for the Princess. Stay tuned... it will feature her favorite "color"- Leopard!