Oh, hi, internet! So you remember that great sewing plan I had for the winter? Well, it’s pretty much out the window by this point. The one thing I did manage to do out of my Seasonal Sew 3 was the Grainline Archer shirt that I’d already been putting off for 2 years, but wow, getting it to happen was a massive struggle.
The main reason? Guess what… pretty much as soon as I posted that plan, I found out that I’m pregnant again. And so far, this has mostly been a repeat of the first pregnancy where I was sick all the time, except now I’ve also got two active boys to watch, so I don’t have the luxury of spending extra hours nursing myself in bed. So between the nausea and the fatigue, I just haven’t had it in me to sew much at all so far this year. But I really wanted to try to get this shirt done while I still fit into the jeans that coordinate with this best (which ended up not happening), so here I am.
I did make a few changes, after a careful examination of my previous Archer. Like I added about 3/4″ to each seam on the hips, and I shrank down the sleeve cuffs because those last ones were ridiculous. I used a RTW flannel that I liked the sleeve fit on as a guideline, and ended up taking something like an entire inch out of the cuff, and then tapering the sleeves down from the seam allowance to fit. I can only push these up to a little below my elbow when buttoned now, instead of fully over it, so I think it went much better. While I feel like I could stand to add some length in here, as I like my shirts on the longer side, I’m overall much happier with the fit this time!
This shirt almost got derailed right at the beginning. I thought I was being very careful about the plaid matching, even cutting the front single layer and lining the second piece up with the first on the fabric. But somehow, it got shifted off just enough to be super obvious in the front. After some panicked Instagramming and some good suggestions (thanks, ladies!), I managed to salvage it by trimming a little off the shoulder seam on one side, and evening out the front hem. Somehow, the plaid still matched at the armhole and side seams, so I have no idea what happened, unless I just blame it on early pregnancy brain.
From there, it was pretty smooth sailing, for the most part. I suppose that being forced to slow down and really take my time with this shirt was not the worst thing in the world, since I was able to focus on being really precise. I did run out of thread just before the buttonholes, and discovered that Gutermann apparently changed the number codes, because the same number thread was not the same shade of teal at all! Thankfully, I suspected something was off in the store, and bought two more spools of other shades as backups. It’s not like I won’t use them at some point, since teal is basically a neutral for me. I think I probably could have made the buttonholes a little larger, but I can still button it all right. So even though this ended up taking the entire winter, at least I have a nice, cozy, nursing-friendly top for this fall! It’s the Robert Kaufman Mammoth flannel, in the “Lagoon” color, and it’s so thick and luscious. I want to make all my flannel stuff out of this now, even if the thickness did make some of the buttonholes a pain.
And at least the shirt itself fits, for now. The baby bump showed up pretty quickly this time, I guess because this is the third time, and I was forced back into my maternity pants around 8 weeks. I think I took these photos around 10 weeks, but it’s taken a little while to get some editing/writing time! So I’m right on the cusp of the second trimester now. Hopefully I’ll manage to get back into the mustardy gold jeans that I have by the end of the year, because I think they’d be great for styling with this shirt.
Coming soon: The new, revised sewing plan for the next few months. Because guess what… I actually legitimately need maternity clothes, believe it or not.
sew adagio 