Cross-back Shirt (McCall’s M6751)

If you read the last post, you may remember that I mentioned sometimes sort of running over sewing projects with my sewing machine…  Well, today’s project is proof of that.  It’s nice on blogs that you get to edit yourself or clean up your sewing table before shooting pictures, but we need the whole story sometimes, too, and the real truth is that often it’s more important to me to finish a project than to get it perfect.  I’m happy with how this project turned out, but I did have to fudge it a bit.

I made this shirt with McCall’s pattern M6751, view A.

Fabric: Daisy Chain by Amy Butler for Rowan

Here’s a back view:

I’m happy with how this turned out.  That’s not to say it turned out the way I expected, but while making it, I discovered a treasure I didn’t know I possessed, and it changed the direction I took with the pattern.  I think I mentioned once that my parents gave me a Singer Featherweight for Christmas one year.  They found it at a barn sale and had it serviced, and then gave it to me.  I was kind of scared of it at first, but as I read about it and started using it, I began to realize that it wasn’t scary–it was a workhorse, and it could probably survive any mistakes I might make on it.  It came with a box of various feet that, to my eye, look like miniature farming implements.  Check out the one that I discovered to help me with this project:

It’s a binding foot.  I had never heard of this before.  Luckily, I have the manual for the machine, so it told me how to use the foot.  It can attach binding (and more!) to the edge of fabric in one fell swoop.  I looked up a tutorial on YouTube to make sure I had the right idea, and gave it a try.  My first try came out a little…rough.  I decided not to aim for perfection, but to try to get the hang of it.  I ripped out my first attempt, and the second went much better.  It wasn’t perfect, but it was usable.  I marked the points where the binding hadn’t really attached, and hand-sewed it on.

 

So, it was finished, and I took the pictures you saw up top.  It lays a little funky, but that may be because I trimmed the seam allowance off since I wasn’t folding it under with the binding like the instructions tell you to.  Then I discovered more places where the binding didn’t attach, so it was time to just zigzag the heck out of the thing.

After a good ironing, it was fine.  Not perfect, but a good finished project and new knowledge gained.  The bound edge brings to mind vintage aprons I’ve seen at antique markets.  Now I know how they did it.  🙂

For those with sharp eyes and a good memory, you may recognize the fabric from the sleeves of my dress in the last post.

I’ve submitted this as my first review at Pattern Review.  You can find it here.

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