It’s All White Now!

Two white shirts for the missus. ‘I need crisp white shirts’ quoth she [ages ago], and I obliged. Eventually.

Another tried and tested pattern, McCall’s 6436, with minimal changes- I pinned the vertical darts on her body to get the fit she likes. She likes a fairly snug fit, so we squabbled a bit about ease, and reached an agreement. I took quite a lot out at the back as she doesn’t have a massive bottom, and most patterns seem to expect one! She does have well-developed shoulders and ‘lats’ though, so needs plenty of room at the upper back. I added in the vertical darts at the front.

I seem to have made the back darts flatter on the striped shirt, and ‘kickier’ on the plain…she likes both!

All seams are French seams, sleeves shortened several inches for my little velociraptor, and I used the wonderful sleeve plackets from the Folkwear Frontier Shirt pattern, now traced off and pinned to the notice board over my worktable.

One is in the wonderful heavy stretch cotton with textured stripes, which I have also used for a Juliet shirt for myself, and the fabulous Okistyle shirt for the missus. The stripes are just wonderful and the fabric is great to wear, washes easily, and presses up like a dream.

The other is a plainer stretch cotton poplin, nothing special, but a lovely weight.

She requested ‘long silver buttons’ so I went on an eBay search, found loads, and to my amazement she liked all of them…so I ordered several sets for her to decide at her leisure.

She opted for the plainer smooth rectangles for the poplin. and the toggle-like ones for the striped shirt. Setting the buttonhole size caused me some consternation, as these buttons don’t fit nicely into the buttonhole gadget on the Pfaff, so I pfaffed around for a while…ahem.

went with middle size for the rectangles, and a smaller button for the ‘toggles’

All buttonholes were a breeze…except for ONE on each shirt, both on a cuff despite all others being fine. Each took three attempts, each took some serious unpicking because of HUGE thread knots at the back. Bizarre. I’d used a firm interfacing so collars, buttonbands and cuffs are pretty stiff, which is perfect for these slightly heavy metal buttons. I would NEVER have thought of sing this sort of button, but we’re both very pleased with the results, very stoosh!

The collars and cuffs on this pattern are slightly large, giving a bit of a 70s feel, which we both love. She’s very happy with them, can you tell?

Shirt #1: plain poplin, rectangular buttons