The first (of seven!!) piece of my Easter sewing is ready!
This is Logan's man shirt. The pattern is Ottobre 06/2010-28, which Ottobre calls the Abbey Lane shirt. It is a basic menswear styled shirt, but without the full collar, giving it a mandarin style neckline. It was designed for a checked fabric, so all of the accent pieces, pockets, band, cuffs and yoke, are cut on the bias. I love that this style included real sleeve plackets as opposed to a continuous lap style cuff. The fabric is a yarn dyed gingham from fabric.com.
I LOVE a real menswear placket on a wee man shirt! It just makes me happy. Ottobre's instructions for putting in the placket are excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing how the Kwik Sew instructions compare when I sew Mitch's shirt. You may also notice that I used pearl snaps as the closure rather than buttons. I had several motives for this. The first was that this is our last few months in Texas, and I wanted my boys to have cowboy shirts! Don't be too surprised if a more western style shirt with a front yoke appears soon... I also recently got a new snap press from Sew Baby, and wanted to try it out. It was great! I usually end up taking out half of the snaps I put in. They get misaligned or bent. The only snap I had to pull out this time was the one I installed backwards. I love snaps on kids clothes, so I'm really excited to have a snap installing tool that really works!
The only other change I made from the pattern was to line the yoke. I much prefer this finish, and I think it gives the shoulders of the shirt a firmer, more tailored look. Next up will be Duncan's shirt. I'm starting to feel pretty comfortable in the realm of man style shirts. All the details that I used to think were fussy and difficult are starting to be fun. I particularly love flipping the yoke and having all the seams just disappear inside. It's like magic!