I’m sort of a classic finisher-type. I like having a checklist, checking off. I like the satisfaction of pulling off and crumpling sticky notes when a task is done. And this blouse, along with its counterpart skirt which I’ll share later, has been on that checklist for a year. In fact the whole outfit was cut, fused and carefully folded into a bag with all of its notions a year ago.

But here’s the funny thing. I’ll get down to the end of a sewing project and can’t be bothered to really finish-finish. I dislike hemming, for instance. I’m an accuracy nut but not at the end. I feel done once I can put it on and pretend it’s done. I didn’t finish the last baby hem on my Cambie, or hem this silk jersey dress (you’re next, buddy!). My fur coat is perfectly done except for the opening in the sleeve lining which was kept open to bag-line the coat. Yes, I wore this about ten times with a hole in the sleeve.

Perhaps I’ve been watching one too many videos of tailors hand-stitching in a calm but deft manner. And reading about folks who love to hand-stitch while watching their favorite TV program. I have a slapdash approach to button-sewing but this time I decided to take some pleasure in one of those end-tasks. I settled down into a comfy chair with a needle, thread and beeswax and an episode or two of Lie to Me. (My second time through this great but short-lived show–I love Tim Roth!) The problem is I can’t look at TV and buttons at the same time. How do you guys do that? Re-runs, where you know all the lines anyway?

Anyway, in all my 20-odd years of sewing, I’ve never really learned a proper way to sew a button that looks neat from front to back, and more importantly, stays put. So after a bunch of tutorial-hopping I decided to practice.

I got so into the hand-sewing that I almost… considered… hand-overcasting the sleeve edges before hemming them. Whoa. Personally, I like serging, and I think it looks neat and refined. Back when sergers/overlockers first became more available to home-sewers, they were expensive but a revelation after pinking edges. A neat and refined revelation, not a quick and dirty way out. But I digress. I stopped short of hand-overcasting because I’m very inexperienced at it. I was so happy with the way the blouse was turning out, and a little bit sad when the hand-sewing was done, that I needed one more thing to really finish-finish, with my hands.

I’ve had these labels for a couple of years and can you believe I’ve never used them? Probably because I’d have to hem first! Alright, so the stitches are unraveling but I’ll get more practice in…

Then there was a little seam-ripper incident. I’m happily at the very end of things, finishing buttonholes and such, when I suddenly notice droplets of blood on my table, on my pattern pieces, on my buttons. My eyes race toward the shirt which of course had a trail of said droplets from the armpit to the cuffs.

I want to live in this shirt, not baby it, and I definitely I lived in this today. I’m not breaking any new glamorizons with this thing but it is the absolutely perfect drapey, comfy, throw-on-over-anything shirt. I really love the fabric, a weightier rayon twill from Dharma Trading. It’s like a cross between a soft cotton and a silk.

I absolutely adore the styling on this pattern, although Danger to those with Big Bosoms–do not attempt these pockets. They are HUGE and flop and drop about, making the whole effect much more there. Which is just fine on me.

This was my second attempt at a Burda mag pattern and while I love the styling, both pattern and instructions could use some help. Their magazine instructions are notoriously cursory, and sometimes flat out confusing in translation. But with all the sewing tutorials floating around the interwebs, who needs instructions?

I could not have done without these:

Turn of Cloth Allowance: one of the clearest explanations about turn of cloth or bend allowance. You’ll want to draft a separate under collar if the shirt pattern has only one collar piece (and this one did). It’s really easy to do.

Collar on Stand: I’m thinking it takes a bit of practice to make any collar look really clean but I thought this method eliminated a lot of extra fussing (or hand-sewing, ugh). There’s a slightly different, but similar-result-looking tutorial at Off the Cuff (you have to rummage around for parts 2 and 3 of this).

Attaching a Shirt Cuff: this is so easy and my cuffs turned out so beautifully!

(There is also another shirt cuff tutorial over at Fashion Incubator which uses the same technique but shows it on a more traditional cuff.)

Even after all these helpful tutorials, this was still a first shirt-making project and so loads of things went wrong. Blood, coffee, odd buttons whose color seemed to match inside but once outside almost clashed (white clashing with white, hmmm), terribly eased sleeves (I hate big sleeve ease and it seems like Burda has a lot), pocket flaps that didn’t quite cover the pockets (the pattern’s fault)–setbacks like this often end up in some theatrical sabotaging wherein I do something like throw the entire project and everything near it into some liquid where it will forever be unsalvageable.

I’m a tragic perfectionist, and not just with sewing. But, but, but I had a blast sewing this shirt. And exactly because I went at it like a trial run and took every step with curiosity rather than drive.

I’m always looking in garden design books for inspiration and ideas and often I tire of absolutely perfectly pruned, serene, photographic gardens, in which every plant is mature and which never seem to be in winter. One of my favorite magazines recently made a point of photographing desert-climate gardens in their barren seasons–so double the barrenness–because, the writer explained, the best gardens have strong “bones” that still show the garden even out of season.

In a like spirit, I show to you the crumpled shirt, the shirt that was certainly pressed but went through tucked and untucked, rolled up and unrolled all day long. That is the shirt I want to see. Annie Hall would be proud!