Vogue 1526, Paco's shirt!

I am so thrilled to make this Paco Peralta design, Vogue 1526. I, and many other long time bloggers have been following Paco's blog, career, Pinterest, etc for quite some time. I am thrilled he is now one of Vogue's designers and I really look forward to his future work. Paco's designs are WEARABLE. They are not complicated, yet have couture touches that are manageable, like the buttonhole slit in the top of this shirt. They are very polished.

My fabric is purchased and I can't wait to get going. Some of you may have seen Tany of Couture and Tricot's version, a wondeful white shirt much like above. But it's not a white shirt time of year up here in the North Country and I decided to take a bit different tack with my efforts.

I live in the cold and flannel shirts are standard issue, lined flannel shirts, far more practical, are even more common. My plan is to make a lined flannel shirt with Paco's design. I have probably most sewing books written in the past thirty years and decided I needed to study up and refresh on working with plaids. I went through my books and found the best information in the Vogue Sewing Book and Claire Shaeffer's Fabric Guide. Vogue had a brief couple of paragraphs but Claire's book had pages of info. I studied balanced plaids, unbalanced plaids, even plaids and uneven plaids. Claire even had info on uneven balanced plaids and even unbalanced plaids, etc. Yikes!  I doubt you could find more plaid info anywhere else. I studied Claire's book and feel ready to go. I know from Claire that much will not match, something we also learned in the classes I've taken from her. The important parts are the center front and back and the sleeves. The rest you are downright lucky if it looks good, but that is OK per Claire. 

The other thing I have decided to do is to flat line the shirt, all but collar and cuffs. This will provide warmth and stability to the shirt. After looking at many linings I decided on another blouse fabric, a very thin poly with shiny motifs. Well, I didn't like those and will be using it on the wrong side as you see in the pic above. It has much more of a silk look this way as well. All vertical seams will be flat lined. You can find information on this above in the Tutorial pages. Any questions, just ask. Non vertical seams will have the felled seams as per the pattern. The hem will be a challenge but I think I have it worked out. Does anyone else wake up in the middle of the night and deal with how to incorporate changes from the pattern being used? and worrying if they will work? I do this a lot and by the time I start cutting I have it all worked out. I always have fingers crossed. So if you like the exact way Paco designed this shirt, check out Tany's blog.His design is amazing and her results beautiful. I will be doing this more casual look and I hope he approves. 

Did you notice how I chose a more femine color scheme? I am happy with that. I am surrounded with classic plaid designs up here and really like this different one. It is an even plaid and that will help a lot. I look forward to sharing this process with you. 

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Thank you, everyone, for the lovely comments on my apron dress. It is always appreciated as are all your comments. Happy New Year..................Bunny