Colorblock Black and White Striped Tunic with Pockets: McCall's M6565

I made this shirt the other day. It took about eight hours, because there was tons of planning, and I had to re-fashion the original pattern due to the fact that I have zero torso. I think it's super cute, though. It's another "bought pattern" one, so I am just going to cover details and not the process.

I bought this pattern from a thrift store over a year ago, and I've been dying to make all of the designs below, but. . .as you can tell, I started with "D." The only problem with it was that the pattern for the inner front lining was missing, so I had to make a new one based on the other pieces. 

This is one of those projects that you go, "This is obviously for sewing women to make themselves and/or only their closest friends/relatives as gifts, because no one would want to actually pay for the amount of work that goes into something like this." I mean, it's not a wedding dress, and no one is going to want to pay $160 for a shirt when they can buy clothes off the Walmart sales rack for $2! (That was my rant for the day.)

Notice the gathers on either side of the bust. Also, notice how the stripes start horizontal at the shoulders, but because of the design and gathering, the stripes start to slant toward the hips. Kind of interesting. 

This wasn't in the directions, but I top-stitched the middle panel because it wasn't laying right. The pattern called for non-stretchy fabric, but. . .I love jersey, so I ignored those directions and top-stitched the middle panel.

Pockets!

The original patterned sleeves stuck out too much, so I folded them and stitched them in a bit.

I hand-tacked the folded part down underneath.

Back darts. They were actually more complicated than I'm used to, but they turned out nicely.

Side view.

Okay, this is why this shirt took so long: The entire thing is fully lined. This is the front lining.

Back lining.

Even the sleeves are doubled. The advantage to completely lining the entire thing is to keep it stable from underneath and to keep from seeing any top-stitching on the outside (other than the stuff I did on purpose that I showed you earlier). It just looks cleaner that way, but. . .I mean. . .It's not like I'm going to meet the queen in this, you know? I probably won't take all these measures in the future for just a shirt!

Here you can see the folding and tacking of the sleeve from the inside.

The black line is the top-stitching from earlier and the other vertical seam is a dart in the lining.

Both the sleeve holes and the neckline I understitched.

I think I am going to try a scaled-down version of this sometime using my "lay it down and cut around it" method and see if I can make nearly the same thing in less time. Still, besides the fact that it took so long, it is really cute. . .and well made, if I do say so myself!

The End!