Weekend Project: Another One Bites the Dust

See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little.

Pope John XXIII

A good motto for a sewing teacher, I think. I have gotten together with Ana and Juana twice since my last report. A week ago we assembled the main bodies of the shirts. The boyfriends, David and Abel respectively, tried them on and announced the fits to be good. (Phew!)

Today was a long, but very productive day. Our goal was to get enough done so that they could finish the shirts by themselves during the week. In other words, I wanted to be with them while they did the collars, the sleeves and at least one buttonhole and one button.

Have I mentioned that they seem to be naturally drawn to difficult patterns? I had hoped that their first collar would be a one piece collar, but no, Ana picked a pattern with the additional collar stand... Still I was very happy with how well the collars came out. Here is a picture of Ana's collar right before she closed up the collar stand:

Notice the two rows of decorative top stitching around the collar proper. :)

Here is Ana's (David's) shirt with the collar completed:

Note the contrasting inside button band. :)

And here is Juana's (Abel's) shirt with the collar completed:

Not bad for first timers, huh? In fact, we worked for a little over 4 hours, and we were able to finish everything except the hems! They'll finish up the shirts this week easily, and (hopefully) I'll have pictures for you next week of the boyfriends IN the shirts. ;)

One nice thing about the pattern - the sleeves went in perfectly! No need to adjust with basting stitches. That was a pleasant surprise! Speaking of the sleeves, they are double thickness. The inner layer is the alternating fabric, so if David rolls up his sleeves, the light green ("woof") fabric will become his cuffs. (Sadly, I did not think this part through carefully, and the lettering on the cuffs will be upside-down...)

I introduced a new concept to them today - the "you are the only person who will ever notice that tiny imperfection" concept. I don't know about you, but this is certainly the credo that allows me to keep sewing!

So, that's another project ticked off our list of sewing lessons! We may only do one (or at most two) more projects together. The time has really flown and I am already feeling a bit sad to think that the end is in sight...