Shirred Shirt

Here it is... my first ever shirt sewn completely by me!  I have a shirt similar to this that I got at a yard sale and looking at it, I thought "this can't be that hard to make".  Well, coming up with it completely on my own was challenging, especially for me- a beginner.  But, it was fun coming up with the design on my own!  I'll admit I'm afraid of patterns.  It seems like I can never quite follow those instructions right.  I never know what all the terms mean.

I don't have a tutorial here for you ( I may attempt one later after I perfect the process), but I will give you the basics on how I made this.

I cut out a 42 x 22 inch piece of material and then realized that it wasn't quite wide enough to fit all around me.  So I cut out another 8 x 22 inch strip to fill in the gap. Honestly, I like this element of the shirt.  It might have been boring with just all grey material.

After sewing those two strips together, I connected the ends to make a wide tube.

Next, I sewed some shirring at the top. Shirring is a skill I acquired while trying to make a skirt, which did not turn out well, but not because of the shirring part.  Shirring itself is not so hard, but it took FOREVER to figure out how to get it to work on my Bernina.

Every tutorial I read about shirring said to wind the bobbin by hand, but that never worked for me.  I couldn't get enough tension.  I already had the tension dial turned up as high as it would go and I was using the longest stitch possible.  I wasn't going to go inside the machine and mess the the screws to tighten it up either.  I didn't want to mess up my machine for other sewing projects.  So, in the end, what worked for me was winding the bobbin with elastic thread with the machine- the exact thing everyone said not to do! Hah! I showed them! It seriously just depends on your machine.

After a few rows of shirring, I cut out two 9 x 13inch rectangles of the sleeves.  I shirred one row on each long side of each rectangle and attached them to the body of the shirt. 

Attaching the sleeves was really difficult.  I'm not sure it would be easier to attach them in the beginning instead of at the end, but I ended up hand stitching part of it.  It took forever! But, yes, now it is done and I really like how it turned out :)