The Valentine's Day Hawwiian shirt, finished

So, I finished the Hawaiian shirt a month later. Do I need to repeat the phrase "loosely following?" No, thank you very much. Needless to say, a few things got in the way of my sewing, and I sew so infrequently that I'm always feeling like a beginner. Kind of fumbly and making many mistakes.

Shirts fronts done. No mistake here.

Fusible interfacing fused onto collar stand and collar. Seems simple enough right? Mistake #1: I had the interfacing bumpy side/sticky, melty side up, so it stuck to the iron instead of the collar. After cleaning the iron, I tried again. This time I used some pressing paper, which is just some parchment paper. This (and placing the interfacing bumpy side down, duh) helps keep the iron clean. I also trimmed the interfacing a bit smaller than the pattern pieces to avoid it sticking to the ironing board.

Next were the pockets. Mistake #2: I made the pocket with the right side of the fabric, which is actually the wrong side for this shirt. I want the faded side to be my right side, so I made another pocket. Then I was informed by the soon to be shirt wearer that the pocket needed to match the motif of the fabric in the pocket area exactly as to blend in perfectly and not be seen. So I started on pocket #3.

I used a piece of cardboard (an empty cereal box) cut in the shape of the pocket to form the bottom rounded corners. This worked great.

It matched up perfectly. If not for the pins and the seam across the top, you probably wouldn't be able to see it.

Pocket top-stitched on. The last things to do are the button holes and the buttons.
Mistake #3: Slicing the buttonhole threads while cutting down the center of the buttonhole.
I bound it back up with a needle and thread followed by some fray check for good measure. Good as new.

For the buttons, I used these from an old worn out Hawaiian shirt that I had thrown in my stash with thoughts of someday making a used Hawaiian shirt quilt.

Pictures of the shirt actually being warn will follow. Someday.

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