day thirteen: lucky

First things first.

CRISIS AVERTED! There’s plenty of room for the neckhole on the correct side of the shirt. Yay! Of course that means I’m going to start work on that tonight, but that’s fine. Better than fine. It’s great!

I’m sure you’re all terribly relieved for me. ::grin::

INTERIM VICTORY!

The neckline is cut. The slits are cut. I just pulled a thread to cut the strip I’m going to use for binding the neckline, and I’m getting ready to start sewing!

look, there’s a hole for my head to poke through!

I think I’m going to use the scraps for the underarm gussets.

Stand by for further developments. I’m suuuuuuper excited for this now!

I got all the slit edges sewn down and rolled over, and I was pinning the binding strip (a 1.5cm strip cut off the selvedge) to the collar when I decided that I should try it first.

I’ll post pictures of the stitching on the slits and progress pictures on the binding, obvs, but I just wanted to post this while I was in the throes of my initial excitement.

“SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

this is less of a neck binding than a finish

I had hoped to get the binding done tonight, but given that I missed an important line and misread an instruction, I had to pull the sewing I’d done (not a lot) and redo it (even less). I know what I’m doing now, so I’ll pick it up tomorrow and finish it, and then I can move on to the sleeves… which I have not cut yet.

In the meantime, I promised pictures of the neck slits, so here they are.

I turned the left edge under and sewed it down to the body of the shirt, the double-turned the right edge and sewed that down as well

Both edges used an overcast stitch.

The other side I treated just the same. The slits are opposite one another, so that when you close up the ties, the neck closes completely. I’m so pleased with it, and that’s what’s keeping me going.

For now, though, I’m going to eat a thing and go to bed. Night, y’all.

day fourteen: fiddly

interlude: mistakes may have been made