No More Shirts for a While

Today I finished my third version of the BWOF shirt made from bargain table chiffon from Hancock's. This is the first time that I have sewn with chiffon, so it gave me a little bit of trouble. However, I outsmarted it!

There are a few things that I did to make working with this fabric a bit easier:

1. I starched it before I cut it. This is the same thing that I do with charmeuse. It makes it a lot easier to handle and press, and it won't slither all over the place if you do that. I just throw it in the washer when I am done with it.
   
2. I did not hem it, I just used the selvage edge for the bottom of the shirt.
3. I interfaced both the front and back pieces of the collar and collar stand, this made it a lot easier to sew, and to crease to turn under for the interior finish.
4. I hand basted a lot of seams, including setting in the sleeves and on the empire seam. The fabric is so light, it doesn't like to hold onto a pin.
   

Even with all that, it was still a total pain to work with, and I am glad it is done. Here is the finished shirt:


All the pieces were cut on the cross-grain, without the fabric doubled. I did this so that I could line up the pieces exactly the way I wanted them, so that the border print would fall correctly.


You can see here that I cut the sleeve pieces so that the cuffs were in the border print, and laid out the sleeves so that a portion of the border was on the bottom...I used the first version of the shirt to determine where I wanted the border to fall, based on where the sleeves hung in relation to the hem:


I also converted the back pleats into darts. Here is the original shirt, with the pleats:


And here is the current version, with darts:


I am very pleased with how this shirt turned out, and also pleased to have triumphed over a fussy fabric. After that last charmeuse shirt, I always have starch handy in the sewing room!

But now, I think it is time to return to either the UFOs that are still lurking in the sewing room, or get back to fitting pants. I have made so many pairs of "tape pants" I would really like to try a new pattern, and am really drawn to this pair from the July issue of BWOF: