Dad's shirt is done and shipped off!

It is still quite cold here in Chicago land. This weekend was in another deep freeze... other than trips out to the barn, I was perfectly content with staying indoors and playing in my sewing room!
My Dad's birthday shirt is done! It came out great and I can't wait until he gets it. I really want to see a picture of him in it.

I mock flat-felled all the seams so the inside has a very clean finish. Top stitched all the details on the outside and went with the orange buttons. I did change both the direction of the buttonholes as well as the button spacing from what the pattern called for. I double and triple checked all my husbands 'Hawaiian' Shirts and they all had vertical buttonholes (change #1) and the spacing of the buttons was at either 3 3/4 inches to 4 inches apart with a minimum of 5 buttons on the shirt. That was change 2, the pattern directions called for only 4 buttons spaced 4 1/2 inches apart.

The shirt front on hanger

Flat on the cutting table

Collar detail

side vent detail

The funniest part of the entire thing was shipping it. I originally had asked my DD to wrap it up in an extra Kohl's shirt box so we could take it to the Post Office, stick it in one of those free cardboard priority mail boxes and ship it to NJ. The problem was that the shirt box was too long for any of the free priority mail boxes... so, I was just going to purchase a bigger box and then pay the shipping on top of it. Oh NO! My DD is a very frugal college senior living on her own and she saw no reason to pay all that extra money!

Make a long story short she unwrapped the shirt, carefully folded it into the smallest possible bundle, wrapped it in birthday tissue paper and a plastic grocery bag for protection and then stuck it and 2 cards into the smallest box they had! and in the process saved me $7.02.

When I started to complain about wrinkles her comeback was ironing is free and Grandma is really good with her iron!!! Too funny!

Small Flat Rate Box
Domestic Rate: $4.85

Size: 8 5/8" x 5 3/8" x 1 5/8"
Good for: Brochures , Small Electronics, Jewelry

Now to ponder my next project!! Always so many ideas to choose from :)