Tunic shirt

My continued experiments in making shirts for myself that have enough room in the arms and shoulders! Altered "my" shirt pattern (previously adjusted for my shoulders) mixed up with another vintage pattern that had a 'keyhole' type front.

I was trying to emulate this dress tunic on Etsy. However, I messed up the pattern on the collar and saved it by cutting it deeper and facing it simply. Also, my pattern did not want to gather well across the front and I had begun the collar too low to look much like the inspiration item, anyway. Will keep changes in mind to make the neck higher on a future project. I put tiebacks on the edges in red, which allows the front to be drawn tight and not look like a maternity shirt. My brother saw one of the shirts I had made for myself last year and thought the gathering across the front meant I was expecting. Yeep!


sleeves!

I always cut the sleeves generously, as it is the hardest part to fit with my very large arm muscles. I could try to take them in a little at the bottom half of the armhole next time - see how much I can cut and still lift and stretch the shoulder/arm muscles the proper distances without stressing the garment.

ALSO: Esme and I went to a crafty ladies type get together today, and we did enjoy ourselves. It was a show and tell of things that the ladies make and although I was running behind Esme for most of the morning I had her outfit, mine, and a few knitted things with us to show. The other ladies brought projects to work on - my work-in-progress was keeping Esme occupied with the right things. Miss Diana definitely wanted me to not worry about breaking anything or making noise - but I naturally wanted her to be good and not do any damage! She chased the cat around and did throw one fit about not being allowed to go chase the outside cat in the cold weather in her stocking feet. She was very good for the most part, and enjoyed lunch with us (I brought us chicken noodle soup and french bread and Miss Diana offered strawberries which are an Esme _favorite_) and drawing and playing with various toys that were about the place. Esme really does need to be around more different people, like this - as she tried to call Miss Diana 'Grandma' and her husband 'Santa' *haha*. One thing Esme did that made me doubletake during the visit was she found a large plastic bank that was shaped like a combination lock. She went over to the door of the sunroom and slipped it on to the door handle and told us we were locked in. HAHA. And she was extremely interested in the loom they were trying to repair on the main table - she tried to measure it with the measuring tape and did break that the same way she breaks my measuring tapes here at home. Miss Diana did want to have her back another day - she said it was a lot of fun and she wanted to spend more time with Esme :)