Men’s shirt: first muslin

I started late for the Men’s shirt sew-along because I couldn’t find any cheap fabric for the muslin. That was a lie. It’s just that I always have trouble working with deadlines or going along with the others. This sew-along is not only a sewing challenge, but also a challenge to this tendency of mine.

After kicking myself off the couch, I biked for ten minutes to the nearest fabric store and bought this cheap fabric. The store was not a regular fabric store, it was small, filled tightly with bolt and cut fabrics, old buttons, and dusty knick-knacks that look like they’ve been there since the owners -an elderly couple- were young. The fabric I bought was thin cotton in indescribable color, $2 for 2.5 meters. I also bought the buttons there, $1 for 10 buttons!

I made the size M of tMPB flickr group is also very helpful, with many tips and experiences shared by the others.

The first muslin was finished yesterday and we did the fitting this morning. The silhouette is fine, Negroni pattern is slimmer than most of my husband’s store-bought shirts but I think he looks better in this fit. The length of the hem and sleeves are also fine. The first button needs to be lowered. However, there are a lot of folds around the neckline area. The shirt looked better on the front when he straightened his body, but the folds moved to the back.

There is some pulling around the back neckline that may indicate that the neckline is too high. When the shirt is buttoned to the neck, the front neckline is also too high. I wonder if this is the cause of all those folds?

I will start working on the second muslin with lowered neckline soon, and also use it as a practice to make pockets. It will have double pockets with flaps.

My husband said that he liked this first muslin anyway -even the indescribable color- and will wear it. I still don’t know if I’m going to fix it or not. It seems that the bunching around the neckline didn’t annoy him at all. He also said that he liked my ‘crazy eyes’ when I was doing the fitting and looking for the culprit behind those darn folds (@_@)

Men
Front and back. There's a lot of folds around neckline.
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Front and back with straightened body. Less folds on the front but more on back.
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Side view and with arms extended.
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Folds of fabric on shoulder.
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The neckline is a bit too high and needs to be lowered. I wonder if this is the cause of the folds.

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