A few years ago I informed my family members that I was no longer buying them birthday/Christmas presents.  Instead, I asked them to tell me what they wanted me to make for them.  This has actually worked surprisingly well.  (Although I definitely do not always have their presents finished by their actual birthdays, but they do get them… eventually.)

This shirt was actually a surprise, though!  I figured that I knew my sister well enough to make something she wouldn’t hate.  Luckily, we are almost the same size, so I was able to use a pattern I had already fitted for me, McCall’s 6649.  The fabric is a plaid cotton seersucker that I thought would work well as a layering shirt in San Francisco.

I did not worry about matching the plaid vertically, only horizontally, and I think I did a pretty good job!  The collar, cuffs, placket, and pockets are cut on the bias.

For the construction, I flat felled all the seams, as is often seen in men’s shirt construction but not women’s.  This definitely took longer, but I love the super clean finish. (Sorry, forgot to take a pic of the inside.)  The collar and cuffs are finished by stitching in the ditch on the right side.  For the yoke, I really like the “burrito method” shown in this Grainline tutorial.  I think that overall, the finishing of this shirt is the nicest I’ve done (this is the 7th collared, button-up shirt I have made).  However, I am still not satisfied with the finishing on the cuff and want to research a better technique.