Unseasonably Archer

Oops, hang on - is this thing working??

Yes, another one of those awkward photo shoots.  I guess it's a little while since I got my face in front of the camera, and I just wasn't feeling it. Plus, it was cold.  Just as well I had a flannel shirt to model rather than a DIY bikini (yeah no, that's not coming up any time soon).

So, it's an Archer. With a whopping 10 cm / 4 inches of length removed from the sleeves. Do I have exceptionally short arms, I wonder, or is it the pattern? The only other adjustments I made were a no-dart FBA (of course!) and 5 cm / 2 inches extra length. I have a proportionally long torso - but I do like my tops lengthy, there's no denying it.  It's becoming a kind of unthinking pattern mantra: lengthen lengthen lengthen. One day I'll end up with a hoodie down to my knees and realise things have gone too far.

Anyway. Button placket, pockets and back yoke were cut on the bias for ease of plaid (non-)matching, and for the rest I used Jen's method for easy plaid matching, which worked out just fine, although I do wish I had paid a bit more attention to the vertical placement too. I don't like that big white stripe just off my centre front. But then I don't dislike it enough to not wear the shirt, so whatevs.

I don't know, can you tell I'm feeling a bit meh about all this? (Or maybe it's just - at time of writing - the Monday blahs). I do very much like wearing it though, or I would if it hadn't been so darned warm recently. It's like I singlehandedly brought on spring with my long-sleeved flannel sewing. The shirt is destined to languish in the wardrobe until autumn and the renewed need for cosy, grungy boyishness.

It was a grey day, so I filtered the pics as best I could to look remotely interesting (with limited success...). In real life the plaid is a rather lovely mix of primary colours, as you can see below. What you can also see is that my details are not exactly excellent - the collar, placket and pockets are all finished well enough, but they definitely lack finesse. However, total fail in matching up the button placement and buttonholes - the plackets don't overlap properly at all. Despite several excellent practice runs, sewing buttonholes went disastrously, and in the end I was so frustrated I just sewed the buttons on as fast as I could and called it done.

In real life, no-one will know and no-one, me included, will care.

I made my first shirt!  Which actually is not meh at all. It rocks.