Birthday sewing shirt Vogue 8096 etc

Apparently, I bought my husband a plasma cutter for his birthday.
Although I have been assured that  this is a highly desirable birthday present, it was a somewhat unsatisfying gift giving process. This may have had something to do with supplying only the $. (I had to Google plasma cutting, looks nasty to me,  other peoples' hobbies can be incomprehensible...)
This has displayed to me that in my case, sewing a gift has selfish elements, mostly to do with giving myself warm fuzzies.
Being rather partial to thinking well of myself, I sewed my husband a proper birthday gift, being something handmade and one-of-a-kind.

See the nice shirt? It is my usual Vogue 8096 pattern, made according to David Page Coffin's Shirtmaking book, flatfelled to within and inch of its life, and with topstitching via my handcranked Singer circa 1933, which has a perfect straight stitch. I am so lucky.


It has lovely parallel stripes at the front yoke seam....

....leading to a satisfying stripe intersection at the back yoke.



I fiddled about to make fancy back pleats, which is a nice change for me.

I lined up the plackets so the stripes matched, a bit like jigsaw puzzles.I can almost see why patchwork is appealing.

Look! a contrast inner collar stand and amusing initial labelling ;)

He bought this fabric himself, at Global Fabrics in Wellington, New Zealand, whilst he was hanging about pretending he didn't mind me admiring every single thing in the shop- 2011. He is a very enabling sewing supporter.

Did you notice there is no man inside this shirt?
I have given up on photography torture of my husband.
Is it a bad thing that this makes me less inclined to sew for him? Blogging definitely influences my sewing.
 

Here is another thing I sewed for him, on special order, which is much more virtuous sewing. Just imagine that this on a man's head instead of charmingly applied to a paint tin. I know you all have excellent imaginations.

 I am patting myself on the back for this one. This strange object is a merino jersey under-cycling-helmet  head warmer and sun protector. He asked that I make it for cold morning rides  - to replace his anti-sunburn caps worn during summer cycling.I made it about 2 months ago, actually I made 2 of them, and he has been promising to model it ever since. Hmmmm.

We might as well get lots of dull sewing done in one post.
New ironing board cover

Elastic drawstring cord and old towel for padding, untrimmed because I had not got the overlocker set up.

It is prettier than the last one, but I'm glad I have some fun sewing coming up.



Stashbusting statistics
Various merino jersey scraps
2m of cotton quilting fabric about 2009
3m of cotton shirting 2011

Vogue Man's Shirt 8889

Although I am not in Carolyn's league with my multiple uses of a men's shirt pattern, I have made 9 shirts from shirt pattern Vogue 8096 since November 2011. My husband was suitably pleased with all the shirts and I had no reason to buy another pattern.
This didn't stop me from buying the new release Vogue 8889. I thought Vogue should be encouraged for including a man shirt that is cut slightly differently and has actual design details, and perhaps I was just a bit tired of V8096.





However, in my sewing room, most of the design details included were rejected. He vehemenently rejected the cute little pintucks on the yoke, which I expected, and has a strong  dislike of button down collars, so the concealed buttoning undercollar was not an option.
So what is left that makes this shirt different from his other shirts?

1. Side panels.
These are shaping panels on the back, but merely decorative at the front. I cut them on the bias to meet as chevrons at the side seams, as I felt that all this extra work should actually be noticeable.



2. Tiny little collar
This is not my favourite collar, but it is slightly different and looks OK once I used collar trimming and shaping techniques from David Page Coffin's Shirtmaking book.

3. Concealed buttons by a Chesterfield front





 - this is very easy but looks as if you have done something clever. You need to stitch down the outer fold in between the buttons (I did this by hand, catching only the underlayer of the folded fabric) so that the fold does not flap open and display your buttons in this loose fitting shirt, but this was the only omission in Vogue's instructions in how to construct this sort of placket, and would not be necessary in a close fitting shirt.

What is not different is the fit. This shirt says it is loose fitting, whereas the earlier pattern does not mention fitting ease at all, but both shirts are quite similar in girth in a size 38.   I think this is a mistake on Vogue's part. Shirt 8889 could quite easily be much more fitted, having shaping in the seams in the back  and if I make it again, I will taper to a 34 in the body of the shirt. I object to sewing shaping seams when I don't need them.

Finding this shirt rather dull, I added some play with the stripes. I cut the front stitching line of the yoke on grain (and on stripe). This was a tip passed on to me by Ann Rowley (currently on BBC2 being a super sewing star in the Great British Sewing Bee), who mentioned in a shirtmaking thread at Stitchers Guild that this would automatically make a 2 part yoke chevron at the back.
Look!


David Page Coffin mentions this technique in his Shirtmaking book too. His take "a distinctly British touch that looks quite odd- but not uninteresting to the American eye" demonstrates to me that this Australian eye has British tendencies. I think this looks rather smart and makes stripe matching at the sleeve very easy.




In keeping with the chevron theme, I cut out the inner collar stand in two parts so that I could have a centre back chevron here too.

I used the sleeve plackets from the earlier Vogue pattern.



 I have cut out a template with 1/4 inch seams from the earlier pattern, and could not bear to do it again for something with only minor differences, that will be worn rolled up at all times anyway. I labelled the shirt here for my own amusement.

The shirt construction did have a few hiccups. I was forewarned by the review by Peter of Male Pattern boldness that this pattern has drafting errors. Although these were less striking in the size 38 than in Peter's size 34, like him, I found that the collar stand centre back was off centre (about 3mm). I also found that the back yoke did not line up with the lower back and felt that the sleeve was too wide for the armsyce seamline.  There was no finished garment measurement for the neck nor waist circumference.
Shirts are fiddly and require precision sewing. There are no wow factors in a conservative man's shirt, so you have to take pleasure in stripe matching, so these errors just make the construction more difficult than it needs to be.
Overall I quite like this pattern. I appreciated the inclusion of such finishing details as instructions to flat fell some seams ( I used a flat felling foot and 1/8 or 1/4 inch seams rather than Vogue's, but still...)
This shirt was intended as a trial garment. My husband does not participate in fitting, and does not like to model for the blog, but kindly agreed to some snaps at the bottom of the back stairs when on the way to work this morning (please excuse background unsuitableness and contrasty lighting, I have to work with what I get). Unfortunately, I think this shirt is too loose to show any of the non-yoke design details.



 You may see another version of this shirt with fitting changes, but this is not at the top of my list.

Stashbusting 2.2 m of shirting cotton 2010, Michael's fabrics
 

Construction cursing Vogue trousers 2836

My husband is a terrific sewing supporter. He makes important sewing tools for me (does anyone else have 3 sleeveboards?). Whenever I am dithering about whether to buy fabric, he says, without exception, that I should definitely buy it, even if it is an internet purchase rather than the husband torture of waiting for me in a fabric shop. He is well trained in admiring seam matching and finicky topstitching, and can say "that fits really well" with an appropriate tone of voice.

You would think that when such an exemplary husband hints that he would like me to sew him something, I would jump right to it, but unfortunately this is not the case, as for some reason I find it quite difficult and non rewarding. I needed to read the Yarn Harlot's Portable Love post today, very timely.

Here is some guilt induced sewing, Vogue  2836 trousers that took me 2 whole weeks!



 I am quite sure that the endless hiccups in the construction of these trousers are due to the extremely selfish other side of my brain whispering to me about lovely patterns with frilly bits and colourful fabric. However, the dated cut of this currently in print Vogue pattern may also have something to do with it. Just after I bought this pattern, Vogue released some more men's patterns, and it is about time!



My husband will allow only limited measuring. I last measured him in November 2009, for the shirt pattern I use for him, and he felt this was not very long ago, so I had to pin him down with a coffee and breakfast for a waist and hip measurement. I was not allowed any other measurements. I then foolishly bought the pattern via the internet according to his waist measurement, thinking " men's trousers are sold in Australia by waist measurement", but all the Vogue men's patterns are sold by the chest measurement. Oops. I should read the hidden sizing information more carefully. The highest size in the  pattern I had purchased turned out to be one size smaller than my husband's trouser measurements, so I graded up the pattern before making a toile. I now have an unfashionable suit pattern waiting for my 10 year old son to hit a 32" chest measurement, how useful!

The trousers were too big, other than at the waist. Clown pants were mentioned by someone. I regretted my wasted grading work.
I stitched down one of the front pleats and took in all the seams down to the next size, and modified approval of the fitting was granted, after I had raised the back centre seam and lowered the front seam. This convinced me that men's trouser fitting is nearly as horrible a process as women's trouser fitting, as my husband had appeared perfectly happy wearing RTW trousers for the 24 years I have known him.
I then traced out the smaller size trouser pattern, using a double tracing wheel and carbon paper, with the front pleat pleat folded out and the other adjustments, adding to the side seams above the hip and in the waistband.

There are 20 separate pattern pieces for these trousers, including 7 separate pattern pieces for the waistband and 3 for the fly. These are all directional and differently shaped and sized. Naturally I managed to trace out, cut out and interface the waistband  and fly pieces in the opposite, womanly crossing direction.

Personally, I am not bothered by which way my trouser fly laps. On a fabric saving mission (I thought I might get 2 pairs of trousers from the fabric), I sought clarification of the importance of this issue, I was informed in strong terms that a wrongly crossing fly is even worse than a wrongly crossing shirt front, which had previously involved non wearability of the item.

I traced, cut and interfaced these 10 pieces again.

One of the front trouser leg pieces looked strangely thin.
My tracing wheel had failed to impress on one of its wheels in tracing out this leg, and I had erroneously assumed that the missing line was the inner, stitching line.
I traced out and cut the front leg again. Fortunately I had a large piece of my beautiful quality wool fabric, although the 2 trouser plan was looking more precarious by the minute.

I thought longingly of whipping up a t-shirt, but resisted the urge and forged on with the trousers. I learnt some new-to-me, fiddly, but probably useful techniques for slant front pocket application. The instructions have you apply the outer fabric to sections of both the hip side and slant side of the pocket inner, so there is no lining showing if the pocket gapes on sitting down or squatting. This seems an expensive looking, and not too difficult, detail to me. The front and back pocket bags are both finished with french seams, which again seems a nice detail.

After all this pocket love at the front, I decided to follow the Vogue directions for the welt pocket opening at the back. This was a serious mistake, involving quite a bit of ripping out and eventually succumbing to shameful bar tacks at the short ends of the welt. I should have used Ann Rowley's fabulous tutorial as I usually do. Vogue's instructions lacked appropriate measurement information (you know my natural laziness made this attractive, but I have learnt my lesson AGAIN, I must be a slow learner) and have you do really difficult things, such as finishing the entire back inside pocket before making a buttonhole in the seat of the trousers instead of the much easier task of making the buttonhole before you have any interfering fabric in the way. (I did not slavishly follow Vogue in this instance) The illustrations were fuzzy, so that when there were wonderful instructions such as "edgestitch where shown" I had no idea to which area the instructions were referring. After finishing one of the pockets, on the left hand side, I abandoned all idea of a second pocket, as despite Vogue's illustrations showing 2 pockets, in the instructions it kept mentioning  the left side only, and I have seen other men's trousers with a single pocket. I even congratulated myself at doing the "correct" side first. However, this feeling of cleverness was quickly quashed when my husband said he would prefer the single pocket on the right side, as he always uses the right pocket for his wallet. He seemed to think this had something to do with being left handed but I scorned this opinion and may have said something like "no way" when he asked for pocket 2. I was not feeling very compliant at this point. and suggested that he could manage to put his wallet in his pocket with his dominant hand fairly easily.



Despite my travails, I eventually finished the trousers.



Here is evidence of the 7 piece waistband with lots of bias bits and 5 piece fly, which my husband assures me make the trousers more comfortable and sit nicely at the front.  I quite liked the finishing tricks at the waistband - the folded over bias section at the inner base of the waistband is hand stitched to the waistband seam, so that the seam is completely hidden, and also lined by the waistband base. The outer waistband folds over for about 7mm to the inside, which prevents any peeping of the waist lining. The waistband is attached separately to the two back trouser pieces, then finished together with the trouser seat at the centre back seam, which allows for retrofitting. I had seen this before in my husband's more expensive RTW trousers, and find it quite useful for adjustments.

My husband's main criticism of the trousers is that the right belt carrier is too tight. It is the same length as the other carriers, but as it has to hold two layers of belt, I can see the problem. I am also not terribly happy with the topstitching appearance of the dark grey thread I used. This is the same colour as a subtle pinstripe in the black (tropical wool, Michaels Fabrics) fabric, but shows up more than I like in the bartacks. I must get out a permanent marker and fix this little issue in a couture way in keeping with the rest of the construction ;). In restrospect, I am wondering if I should have lined the trousers, as the photographs look rather wrinkly - more so than in real life. If I develop any enthusiasm I may add lining later, but what a waste of my bias bound seams!

Stashbusting, 2.4m (approximate) of tropical wool, purchase 2011, with pocket lining woven polyester from approximately 1999, cotton shirting for waistband lining etc about 2009.

Verdict - Man sewing takes approximately 4x as long as I expect.