Burda 7136 - The Muslin (or, I Rarely Choose the Easy Path)

Back in November, I purchased several 3-yard pieces of yarn-dyed flannel that was on sale at The Mill End Store and added those to the two pieces that were already in my fabric collection. What can I say, I am a sucker for yarn-dyed plaids. I brought them home and in a gesture of goodwill and selflessness, I offered my husband first dibs.

Surprisingly, he picked the bright green plaid on the far left! Thankfully, David knows that just because a fabric is"his" it doesn't move up the sewing queue any faster. A new shirt for him may be on my list, but I had other ideas bouncing around in my head that I needed to make happen first.

New yarn-dyed flannels! Three yards each.

First up was to try making the Liesl + Co Gallery Tunic out of one of the older flannels. I must confess that I rushed the cutting and planning, so none of the seams matched. I also had a lot of trouble with the flannel shifting when sewing seams. That was fairly unexpected. Anyway, the collar turned out rather wonky, and that combined with the nothing-resembling-matching seams made this tunic an ABYSMAL failure.

Dirty mirror photo, but look at the collar - one side folds nicely and the other sticks out straight.

This was my first time sewing a collar with the stand cut on, so I don't know if the wonkiness of this collar is my error, the nature of this kind of collar, a problem with the pattern, or some combination of the those. I scrapped the idea and salvaged the fabric and made my own version of the Sewaholic Alma top.

It's a little pajama-y, but it is cozy and comfortable.

The careful reader at this point is wondering what the above escapade has to do with Burda 7136. That experience reminded me that working with plaid takes time and it turned out that what I wanted was a more traditional shirt with a traditional collar. Enter Burda 7136 with its (BONUS! EXCITING!) tuxedo shirt with pleated bib and wing collar.

I thought I could trace out both views, make a muslin of the regular shirt, transfer any adjustments back to both views, and then be able to knock out TWO finished shirts! Clever, no?
I received an even feed foot for my Janome for Christmas, and I used it a lot with this shirt. It solved most of my shifty flannel problems. But then I went and made things a little more difficult for myself. You see, I had two old flannel sheets in my muslin bin and I liked the way they looked together. So I changed course a bit and completely finished the muslin. This made the whole process take longer, but if I hadn't I might not have noticed just how tight the shirt was around my shoulders/high bust. And I certainly wouldn't have noticed the TERRIBLE instructions for the sleeve placket and cuff.

Moral of the story: sometimes making things difficult pays off in the end.

"Come on," you say, "just how terrible could the placket instructions be?" Look for a minute at this pattern piece for the sleeve placket and sleeve:

I mean, what even IS that? As I worked through the instructions, I came to discover that not only does Burda tell you to sew the sleeve seam first and then cut the placket slit second, they want you to stitch the top part of the placket together and then turn it right side out! Then somehow you are supposed to magically get it attached to the sleeve (which, you recall, is tube-shaped and has an un-reinforced slit cut into it). Here's a close-up of that placket again. Feel free to print it out and pin it to a dart board.

Talk about being set up for failure!

I got to this point and realized the enormous mistake I was making. I have made several better sleeve plackets in the past with the instructions from David Page Coffin's book, Shirtmaking. (Anyone who might ever make a shirt or anything shirt-like should own this book. Borrowing it from a library is not enough. Also, I won't get any kick-back if you click any of these links or place orders from these sites.)

I am lucky that I keep a little bag of 1/2" wide bias strips of lightweight fusible interfacing. I used two of those strips to stick the cut edges of the slits back together and then proceeded with Coffin's instructions as usual. Well, not quite usual, because I had to work with sleeve tubes rather than flat sleeves. (I had already serged the allowances of the sleeve seams.)
Coffin instructs you to do most of the folding and pressing of the placket first, then you sew the placket to the sleeve, around the slit, right side to wrong side, and THEN you cut the Y-shaped slit.

Next you turn the placket to the right side of the sleeve and press the opening. The most important bit to press is the tiny triangle of fabric at the top of the opening.

Now you fold the shorter side, so that most of the fabric covers the opening and the outer folded edge just covers the stitching of one side of the opening. Press.

Similarly, you now fold the taller side of the placket so that most of the fabric covers the other side of the placket and the outer folded edge just covers the stitching of the opening. Press.

Now you edgestitch the short side, then close it all up and  edgestitch the taller side, making a rectangle around the top of the placket opening and bar tacking. When everything is done, your placket should be neat and tidy with no raw edges showing anywhere, like so:

Outside

Inside

The careful observer will notice the little bit of interfacing sticking out on the inside. This is the excess of interfacing I used to stick the slit back together.
At this point I realized that the all-in-one folded cuff piece that Burda suggested was not going to take turn of cloth into account. So I split them in half and cut new inner cuffs and followed Coffin's instructions for those, too.

This method makes the inner cuff just a little smaller than the outer cuff. This helps it hold its shape nicely. His collar instructions are similar, so I followed those, too, but I didn't photograph each step.
After all that detail work, I still had button holes and buttons to add. I knew at this point that I was not likely to button the top button on this version of this shirt. It is too casual and too tight. So I left off the very top button and hole completely. My expandable sewing gauge to evenly space the buttons, keeping one at the fullest point of my bust. I also used my trusty vintage buttonholer attachment to make all the button holes (fourteen in all). This was as painless and perfect a procedure as one could hope for. I hand stitched the buttons and put the shirt on!

Changes I made to the pattern before making the muslin (beginning with a size 12):

• FBA
• removed waist shaping
• reduced sleeve cap height a bit

Changes made during the muslin:

• reduced sleeve cap height further
• new sleeve placket pattern
• 
  
• new cuff pattern

Changes made to the pattern after finishing the muslin:

• added 5/8" width to shirt fronts (both views, bib front not affected), both sides of yoke, and both sides of shirt back
• added 1" length to sleeve.

Conclusion: I love my old flannel sheets shirt, even though it is small in the shoulders. I am super excited to make two more plaid flannel shirts, starting with the tuxedo shirt and the black watch flannel. Who wouldn't want a flannel tuxedo shirt, I ask you?