Pink Button-Down Shirt

As I previously shared my sister’s first skirt project, now I’m sharing her first shirt. Our sewing teacher had me and my sisters do a button-down shirt as our next project. My older sister made hers in a cream color, and my younger sister and I actually made ours both pale pink; they’re nearly identical except for the buttons. I realize I never posted about mine, so I guess I’ll have to do that soon. This is my younger sister‘s shirt.

As with the skirts, we made the shirts using patterns we drafted based on our measurements, following instructions from a book our teacher had. Now, I’ll start off by saying I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe we made some mistakes with the measurements or didn’t follow the instructions correctly. The finished shirts were, I suppose, not bad as a beginner’s project. However, they didn’t fit the best in a lot of places, and many of the seams didn’t lie where they should. This is especially noticeable at the shoulders and armscyes.

This is a classic button-down shirt. For the bust shaping, she opted for princess seams instead of darts, for a smoother fit. (The actual fit at the bust wasn’t great, but that’s another story.) The back is also shaped with princess seams. On both front and back, they go down from the middle of the shoulder.

The sleeves are standard set-in sleeves, with a buttoned cuff and that cuff opening thing, which it turns out is not typically done on the seam, as a certain person insisted it was. I’m sure that thing must have a name, but I have no idea what it’s called. It was very challenging to do.

The placket was not made separately; rather, the fabric for the center front was cut longer and then folded under and stitched. Here is a close-up that shows the lovely pearly stem buttons she picked, which, of course, she sewed on by hand.

According to the classic style, this shirt has a typical stand collar.

And that’s it for this project: the first shirt that my sister made. All in all, not bad, even with its flaws. She wore it quite often, with the different skirts that she made, which I’ll also be posting soon.