Cowboy Shirt

In my last post I showed you my Tangerine Jeans and promised a Western Style Shirt to go with them - well here it is.

The completed outfit worn together, which I am fairly happy about, threw up some design challenges that were solved by the SFD community and by Glenda. I was very grateful for all the suggestions as to how best to do the yoke and as you see from the photo above it turned out as a neat, clean finish.

I took the comment by Loren to have a shoulder seam and to Glenda to cut the fronts in one and overlay the front yoke piece. Both of these ideas worked and created the finish I was after, thank you.

I cut the fronts with the yoke attached [making sure I matched the stitching line on both] and then cut the yoke piece again from the tangerine fabric. I should have taken more photos of the process but I always find it hard to stop when sewing, especially the tricky bits. 

The yokes were easy to press the seam allowance under because it was a stretch fabric and handled well for the edge stitching to put them in place. I used a Frixion Pen to mark the exact placement and I did this using a template I made out of card from the yoke pattern using the stitch line.

Having already attached the back yoke I then rolled the fronts and the back right up tightly so I could stitch the shoulder seams putting right sides together with the bulk of the shirt inside. Once turned right side out again the result is a clean finish with all seams hidden inside.

I then made the collar and stand and attached this to the shirt. 

So far so good but the next bit proved even more tricky and I'm not sure I got the best result here. The sleeves. All started well with the placket made out of the same floral fabric as I didn't want this to be in the contrast fabric and detract from the designer cuffs.

The busy fabric didn't need matching perfectly but still didn't show much so I was happy with that.

I set the sleeves in using the flat shirt method and then used a flat felled seam for the sides and sleeves. Now to add the cuffs.

I used the same design as the front yoke but had to sew them on the opposite way to what I would do normally. Instead of right sides together I attached the inside of the cuff [right side of fabric] to the inside of the sleeve. This was so that I could lay the outer cuff over the sleeve and edge stitch it down as I had the front yokes. The problem was the extra width in the sleeves as they tapered which seemed fine when I was sewing them together but now I see the photos I think the sleeves don't look quite right. Next time I will make the cuffs wider at the pointy end to accommodate more of the extra width of the sleeve at that point and maybe taper the sleeve to be more slim at the wrist end so there isn't as much difference between the cuff and the sleeve. I hope this explains what I mean but you can see in the pictures that they don't look as smart as they should.

I intend to do some research on how RTW cope with a western cuff but we don't have too many here in the UK for me to study...

I wondered if I should put some cowboy style embroidery on the yokes and also a contrast buttonband but I decided not to do either in the end and felt less was more in this case....

I've added a few more shots here to show rear views and without the belt. Writing a blog and showing photos is an excellent way to self critique but I don't want to overdo that as probably no one seeing me will know what went wrong!!! 

Only you. 

 

Thank you for reading.