The saga of the Cynthia Guffey shirt T-2025! A Work In Progress!

This shirt really is a saga, an epic journey of the many muslin kind! At one point I was really ready to give up and throw in the proverbial towel or in this case wad up the millionth muslin, throw it in the can, recycle the pattern and forget the damn thing ever existed. Except i'm darn sure that this thing would have come back to haunt me... in a stray thought, in a dream or more likely a nightmare, in a photo in a magazine when I least expected it. There would be my shirt with it's coveted shirred sleeves and beautiful style lines staring back at me and mocking me.

Well! I sure do have a great imagination! LOL! It was more like sheer determination on my part to succeed in making this shirt. I hate giving up!

I first saw this shirt made up and on display at Cynthia Guffey's booth at the Original Quilt and Sewing Expo in Chicago a couple of years ago. something about it really enamored me and I shelled out the $18 for it. (you can find her patterns on her website) I don't recommend her patterns for beginners, the directions are not always the easiest to follow. However, she has some really interesting designs and details and I have made a couple of her other patterns and have liked them and gotten many good comments on them.

I ended up making 5 muslins for this shirt! This included redrafting the entire sleeve, armhole, upper side front and upper side back to fit me perfectly. I don't have pictures of every muslin, only the ones where Sarah was helping me make changes. I think with every change that I made I was so determined to make the changes and move forward because I was darn sure each time that THIS change would be the one to make it perfect. Hah! what a lesson I learned.  I'm also pretty sure that I would not have been able to get it quite to where it needed to be without the help of my mentor, Sarah Veblen. I would have gotten about 50% there and then thrown it all in the garbage!

Muslin number 3- Feb 2016

Muslin number 5- May 2016. You can see the huge improvement in fit particularly at the back armhole and sleeve.

The great part about making so many muslins on a tricky pattern is that by the time you get to the actual construction in fashion fabric you just nail it.

Muslin fitting in front of a mirror is an invaluable tool! Thanks to Wendy for taking pictures of the process.

To get a better idea of what the shirt is supposed to look like when completed, here is a picture of the line drawing for the pattern.

Line drawing from Cynthia Guffey T-2025

Here are comparison pictures of the original pattern pieces to the final pattern pieces that I have. The white paper is the original Cynthia Guffey patterns and the tissue papers are my adjusted pattern pieces.

Sleeve back on left and sleeve front on right.

Big difference in the Side back pieces!

Big difference as well for the side front pieces. Alot more shaping over the bust was added in.

Only small changes made to the front(shown) and back pieces to account for finessing the shaping.

One of the details that really drew me to this pattern was the shirring of the sleeves. Due to the large changes of the actual sleeve pattern I was not able to use the pattern piece that was included. At first I was at a loss as to how to re-create this shirred look that I really wanted. After conferring with my mentor, Sarah, I was off and running. Of course, once she explained it I was thinking to myself that I should have known that!

Here is a muslin sample of the sleeve front with the base sleeve and the shirred oversleeve assembled. I cant wait to make this shirt!!

Here is the in-process picture of developing the shirred overlay for the sleeve. This was done with the slash and spread method.

Here are the shirred over- sleeve pattern, the base sleeve pattern  and my sample side by side.

I have several projects on my workstable at the moment! 2 dresses for my granddaughter, Princess Victoria, one for her baptism and one for her 2nd birthday party. An outfit for me to wear to the baptism, this Cynthia Guffey shirt plus another button down shirt with fitting darts. I'm hoping to have at this shirt sewn up in time for the ASG national conference in July!

Happy Sewing!

Princess Victoria enjoying her first piece of corn on the cob!