This all started when I made two plaid flannel shirts as Christmas presents for my son and my husband.  Peggy Sagers hasa pattern that I purchased a while ago, and thinking how difficult could this be, I naively jumped right in.

The pattern directions for the front placket were a little difficult for me.  Re-reading the directions several times and looking at the pictures gave me the confidence to try doing them.  They turned out really well.  There was only one small problem; I put the plackets on the wrong side.  I had already put the pocket on, so the plackets were on the wrong side of the front pieces, Whoops. 

What took the most time was the matching the plaid on the front pieces and the back.  After looking at the back yoke, I figured that was never going to match, so I just went for it based on the amount of fabric I had.   The pattern called for a total of 3 yards, but because of plaid matching and trying to figure my husband’s longer sleeves into all this, I came up short.  Fortunately for me, Joann’s had more in both of my chosen plaids, but I had to go to 2 of their stores to get it.

The other harrowing experience was the sleeve placket.  I had some trouble with this too.  I am more a visual person.  I do much better with show me rather than tell me.  About a year or so ago, I purchased a couple of classes from Craftsy about shirt making.  Do you think I watched any of these before I cut 1 pattern piece?  Heck no, I just dove right in until I had trouble.  I pulled out the class taught by the person I have come to consider the shirt making expert, David Page Coffin.  So I went to his class and watched the whole thing on installing sleeve plackets and when I finished, I went back and watched it again.  I got it. And best of all, it worked.

I was also a little stuck when it came to putting on the collar stand and the collar to the shirt itself.  I didn’t want to hand stitch the collar band to the yoke because that made it look a little homemade.  I knew there had to be a better method for this part and as it turns out, there is.  What you do is sew the public side of the collar band from the inside of the shirt and then roll  the inside band over the stitching and sew along the inside neck edge ,  I took it very slowly and it turned out OK.  It wasn’t a professional job by any stretch, but it worked for this shirt.  The most important part was to give the band the space needed on the left and right front edges to button up the shirt, and that it has. 

The shirts finished (all most), I wrapped them up and gave them for Xmas presents to my 2 guys and they were a hit.  In fact, my son took off the shirt he was wearing and put on his new one and he says it fits perfectly. Whew, because that was a guess.

Unfortunately, I made a lot of mistakes on his.  I don’t think any are too noticeable.  The plaids matched, but the collar band was too big for the yoke/neck so I had to squeeze that, …..I mean ease that into place and I messed up royally on the top stitching on one of his sleeve plackets. It’s much too skinny.  I doubt anyone will notice unless they are giving the shirt a real once over.  Oh yeah, and the pleat on the back to make the wider back fit into the smaller yoke, was way too small.  That little piece of work is harder than you would think.  So that does look a little weird, but my son doesn’t care and I’ll make him a better one, someday.

I needed to do a few things to my husband’s like sew on a cuff button and fix the hem, so he couldn’t wear his on Xmas day.  He did say, though, it fit perfectly and that was another guess, but I based the size on one of his existing plaid shirts.

Side Note:  Last Christmas, I made him some flannel pj pants.  I grabbed a pair of his out of his clean clothes pile and used the measurements from that.  Unfortunately, I found out later, these pants are too small and as a result so were the new pj pants.  Rats. This year, though, I made sure I used a shirt of his that I knew fit him because I pulled a sample from his dirty clothes pile.

Gifts given, sizes OK and minor fixes made. I realized I had a lot of fun making these shirts.  There were a lot of pieces to put together, take apart and put together again, but I enjoyed that because for the most part the project was a challenge I could eventually conquer.  The hardest part was the collar band to the neckline and the sleeve plackets.  With a little practice, though, it should get easier and better constructed.  On my next shirt project,  I will keep my seam ripper close at hand, but hopefully not use it so often.