All Buttoned-Up

Last night I sewed the buttons on the shirt, finishing up the project.  I'm quite pleased with how the shirt turned out, although I had some major buttonhole issues.  I made a dozen practice buttonholes on scrap fabric and of course, when it came time to actually make them on the shirt, I encountered a slew of problems.  At one point the feeddog was so clogged that it started eating my shirt.  I had to remove the faceplate and give my machine her first cleaning (which I was secretly excited about).  I lost count of how many buttonholes I had to re-do.  Let's just say that the seam ripper got a lot of use.

I give the Kwik Sew Toddlers' Shirt Pattern a good rating.  And I found this project very satisfying -- I made a button-up shirt!  I wouldn't say it was "quick" though -- if I calculated the hours I put into the shirt and paid myself minimum wage, it would easily be the most expensive item in his wardrobe.  But, since the labor was free and the fabric was $8 (from fabric.com), it wasn't very expensive.  It did help to have one of his button-up shirts handy to look at for reference the few times the pattern didn't make sense.  As with most things, I'm sure I could make the second (and subsequent) one more quickly.  Oh how I wish I had time to whip up a bunch of these shirts (I've been spending entirely way too much time looking at shirting fabric online and have a ton of cute ideas) but a darling new project is calling...  More on that tomorrow!