Completed: The Negroni Shirt

Alternately titled: I Am The Worst Girlfriend Ever When It Involves Gift-Giving

I bought this pattern – Colette pattern’s Negroni – as part of Landon’s Christmas present. I also bought him a nice fat gift certificate to the fabric store, and we picked out two suitable fabrics – a stripey cotton shirting, and a soft checkered flannel. I dutifully made a muslin, and when we checked the fit, I realized a lot of changes were going to need to be made to get this Landon-appropriate (not that the pattern is a bad one, fit-wise – he’s just really particular about how his stuff fits. Kind of like me!).

Then the pattern & the muslin sat in my sewing room for, oh, about 6 months. LAWL.

Most of the issue here is that Landon wouldn’t freakin’ stand still long enough for me to put the shirt on him, pin it closed, and really asses the fitting changes needed. Or, rather, that’s what I’m blaming it on. Either way, I felt bad! So I finally bit the bullet and came to terms with the fact that he wasn’t going to let me stick a bunch of pins in him, and pulled one of his favorite button-ups out of the closet (which is quite conveniently located inside my sewing room, hee!) and used that to measure against the flat pattern. Made a quickie muslin, forced it on the dude once he got home, and lo & behold – the fit was perfect! And once that was out of the way, the actual making of the shirt came together quite quickly.

Here’s a rundown of all the fitting changes – hopefully this will help you understand why I dragged my feet for so long!
– Landon has a pretty big neck for his size, so the shoulders & neck are a size M, tapered down to smaller than a S (don’t remember the exact amount I took out, sorry!) below his chest. The sleeves were also tapered down to less than a S.
– Shortened the torso about 2″ (I think)
– Shortened the sleeves 2″
– Raised the armscye 1/2″
– Lengthened the sleeve cuff about ~1 3/4″ (it fit perfectly out-of-envelope, but Landon doesn’t like wearing his cuffs that tight – he likes them to slide over his watch)
– Widened the bottom of the sleeve to accommodate the new cuff length
– Added a single button to the middle of the placket
– Rearranged the placement of the buttons & added a few more to the front placket, omitted the collar loop
– Cut the yoke, collar & cuffs on the lengthwise grain for visual interest

Also, please ignore all the stray threads and the fact that I did not properly press the collar – I was rushing to sew on all those buttons and get some pictures before the sun set!

I think that’s it!

The actual sewing of this shirt, like I said, was surprisingly fast & simple. Even with the sleeve placket & all those flat-felled seams, it came together in a couple of days – and would have been finished even sooner, but we had an issue with the buttons (they were listed as 1/2″ but they looked reeeally small, so I measured them and they came out at under 3/8″! WTF!). At any rate, the instructions on this shirt pattern are gold. Seriously. Even if you don’t care for this relaxed style of button-up, the instructions alone are absolutely worth the cost of the pattern. I feel like I can tackle anything now! Anythingggg!!

Let’s have some pictures, yes?

This is Landon demonstrating his range of arm movement

I love the contrast of the horizontal stripes on the yoke.

What was that? You wanted to see more of that beautiful placket & topstitching? WELL, HERE YA GO-

unffff

“Landon, tilt your chin down a bit.”

Tried to climb a tree, realized all the branches are beyond dead.

HAAAA, ok, that’ll be enough of that!

Overall, I think he’s pretty happy with the finished shirt! I do want to make more of these… and try out some ~real~ button-ups with a proper collar stand & front button placket – does anyone have a TNT pattern they’d like to suggest?? I will definitely be making this again at least once, in the blue flannel shirting, but I am going to have him wear this one around for a couple of weeks so we can sort out any fitting issues that may not be apparent when he’s just standing under a tree 🙂

Oh, and one more thing – today is Landon’s birthday!

You heartthrob, you.

For real! He’s 25 today 🙂 Happy birthday, you gorgeous man!

Tags: completed, Landon, Negroni, shirt