I had this idea that making a shirt in a different size would be ‘the same’ as making a shirt in my own size. Whups. That ain’t necessarily so. For one, I couldn’t try the shirt on at various points and make sure that I was doing things in the correct order. For another, I thought, “Well, I’ve mastered the collarless shirt, I should try for this mandarin-collar design that’s so much cooler…” Whups. Second design challenge: adding in a collar means that you’re attaching the yoke-lining and the collar in a “completely different order”. And third, I added a little decorative stitching to the collar as I was making it. Whups. Remember your order of operations, people — and recognize that any ‘decorative’ stitching is also likely to be ‘structural’ if you add it in the wrong order.
It’s not a bad shirt. There aren’t any mistakes that I feel I can’t live with or manage around (or that the eventual owner can’t manage around — as if I’d ever fit into a men’s medium! Ha!), or that I can’t correct in future versions now that I see what I’m doing wrong. Overall, a success in spite of small errors.
