Crunching the Numbers…

19/01/2012 6:58 am \ 30 Comments \

I’ve been pretty inspired by reading some posts by other bloggers on the sum total of their clothing expenditure; particularly Waves with her very interesting breakdown of her clothing costs for 2011 and her feelings and thoughts on the same, and Terri with her plans to stick to a set budget for 2012 and the documentation of such in her blog, and Veronica with her strict accounting during her very impressive Sew Weekly year of 2011…. and I have decided to put my own expenditure under the microscope.  
A self-audit.  Yikes!  Nail-biting stuff, no?!
When Craig and I were first married we were frantically saving and had a very strict control on our costs; I totted up all our incomings and outgoings constantly and stuck to a budget  rigidly….  but all that is in the past now!  I haven’t had to add up each and every cent for a few years, and although I don’t think I spend a lot I really have no idea unless I actually do account for myself… and so…
I am going to keep tabs on all the costs of my clothing creations for this year.
Now someone accounting for a RTW wardrobe has it pretty cut and dried, as your clothing just comes with a price tag attached and bob’s your uncle…  when you are making your own stuff things get a bit more complex…  so I’ve jotted down here a few basic guidelines as to just how I’m breaking it down…

Time frame:  I am going to start my accounting from the 1st January to include all the clothes that I finish making in 2012.  
Fabrics costs: I’m counting all the materials for all garments made this year.  If I don’t have the receipt for the fabric anymore and can’t remember what it might have cost (some of my fabrics are years old!!) then I shall make my best guestimate.  If the fabric was a gift, I’ll state that, and count it as free.
I shall not include fabrics bought this year unless I also finish the garment this year.  No really, this makes sense.  It does!  I’m costing my actual clothing here you see, not potential clothing…  
Also, the first time I make something out of a piece of fabric I shall include the cost of the entire piece in that garment, and any leftovers used down the track will be considered as already accounted for.
Pattern costs: I shall include the cost of the pattern I use; but only the first time I use it.  That is, the full cost of a new pattern will be included in the cost of a garment the first time I use it, but each subsequent time I use the same pattern I shall consider that pattern already accounted for and not include its cost again.
Likewise, for haberdashery: the first time I commence using “something”, I shall include the cost of the entire”something” in the cost of that garment, but not for any subsequent garments.  So, say, the first time I pop a new reel of thread on the machine I shall count the cost of the entire reel in the cost of that garment, but not for any garments after that until it is finished.  Likewise dyes and other sundry bits and pieces… 

Does all that make sense?  I realise some of those rules might seem a bit odd and are going to seemingly inflate the cost of some garments at the expense of others that will appear artificially inexpensive, but that is the simplest way I could think of doing it…

And please note…!  I’m not planning to change my habits at this stage, but merely account for them…  This is not an exercise to see how cheaply I can possibly make everything!  (Cheap?  moi??)  There will still be plenty of silk and lace popping up here… (sigh) well, let’s just say I would like for that to happen!…  I still passionately love beautiful fabrics and yarns, and interesting designer patterns, and I’m not going to deprive myself!  I believe my time and effort is worth good quality supplies, and my aim all along in making my own wardrobe has always been to make it the best I can.  Still being fabric efficient, naturally.  I really just want to see how I am going, cost-wise.  So, I will continue to source fabrics and yarns to meet my standards of ethics; supporting my local fabric store as much as I can; and buying fabrics and yarns from countries that have ethical manufacturing practices.

But in the meantime; here is a breakdown of my costs in adding to my wardrobe this year, so far…
The Double-Sleeved shirt:
Fabric $34.60 (includes portion of the shipping cost)
Sleeves; from an op shop shirt; probably cost around $3??
Pattern; been used a whole bunch of times! so free
Buttons; $5.20
Thread; $3.20
Total cost: $46.00
The Calico Cotton cardigan:
Yarn; $80.55
Pattern; $5.95
Buttons; $6.05
Total cost: $92.55
The Sorta Missoni dress:
Fabric; a gift from the lovely Passiona Cottee
Bodice; leftover scraps
Pattern; been used stacks of times, so free
Zip; $2.20
Total cost: $2.20
The Blue-Collar Crime top
Fabrics; leftovers
Pattern; the third time it’s been used
Snaps; part of a box of 50 that I bought last year for the boys’ birthday coats, still going strong… so I’m counting that as free too
Total cost; free!!


Details:
Shirt and skirt; refashioned from 3 of Craig’s old business shirts (so if I was costing this, it would be a freebie!), details here
Shoes; Bronx, from Zomp shoes
Reading specs; a permanent new addition to the wardrobe (sigh…)
and btw, Bessie is wearing a sneaky peak of my next creation… you saw it here first!

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Hot pink shorts; 6 different ways

18/01/2012 3:56 am \ 29 Comments \

So, shorts, and particularly linen shorts are always going to be a warm weather thing and perhaps not an obvious candidate for “see how useful this item of clothing is!”….  But I am an Aussie after all, and typically lead a very relaxed and outdoorsy lifestyle that means shorts are an essential part of my wardrobe for just about half the year  (I wouldn’t choose to wear shorts in winter personally, although I’ve seen a few magazines trying to sell the idea of shorts-with-tights look; that’s just not for me, sorry…)
And I do like to use these 6 different ways posts to showcase garments that have proven themselves runaway useful little wardrobe builders, and that I have grabbed and put on regularly, and have enjoyed wearing.  And these shorts that I made using Burda 7723 are sure fitting into this category.
Ergo.
So here are just a selection of the daily outfits that I have worn including my pink shorts lately, each photo taken on each of the days that I wore them… and I’ve given a few thoughts on my styling choice and how I felt wearing each of these outfits on the day…
At left; I just wanted to try this one because this is the jacket designed to match these shorts in the very same pattern.  I felt a little oddly formal wearing this out and about, although I absolutely loved these colours together (reminded me of Frenchy’s fab outfit with the pink hair in Beauty School Dropout, Grease)  But maybe jacket-and-shorts together is not strictly “me”?  At right; with a chambray shirt, sleeves casually rolled up?  Definitely “me”!  A gardening and sewing day, bliss.

pink1

At left; felt quite fashion-y and rather dressed up in this outfit, even though it is actually just a linen shirt buttoned up and tucked in… I received a few compliments!  Worn out meeting up with some gal pals… At right; with my little white linen Pattern magic top.  Wore this out and about, walking the dog and running errands, and it felt like a perfect match.  Will wear this one over and over again…

pink2

At left; with a little coffee-coloured, triple-collared shirt, and a light cardi (to avoid sunburn)  I thought this cardigan would be a good colour match but was interested that it made my shorts look purple!   Loved wearing this, it was a great outfit for a cooler day, and I do prefer a cardi-with-shorts look…  At right; with a pale chartreuse loose linen top and matching scarf.  I really like the colour wheel opposites here, and the fact that the greens are so pale against the vividness of that pink peeking out underneath. And that it’s so comfy and cool…

pink3

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how this rather in-your-face, look-at-me colour has settled happily into my almost pink-less wardrobe, and how much I have enjoyed them… years of avoiding hot pink because of some misguided fear that it would mark me as “not serious”;  I think I’ve relaxed a bit!  So, which one of these outfits would be the most “you”, do you think?
(And fyi, the outfit I am wearing today is the last one with the pale chartreuse top and scarf.)

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Blue-collar crime

15/01/2012 3:10 am \ 49 Comments \

The charge; gratuitously making for myself the same shirt, a second time. Namely the Vogue 1248 triple collared shirt.  Well, how many collars does a girl really need?? (tsk tsk)
No plea entered, as the defendant is so clearly guilty as charged.
Sentenced; to wear it during a humid 37C day and attempt to look cool, calm and collected for a picture.
Verdict for that one; hmmm…  what do you think?
OK, I’ve made another loose ‘n light little triple collared shirt.  Again??  And so soon after the last effort?  I seeeee.   Shouldn’t you be starting on some of those (ahem) piles of other new patterns, awaiting your attention?
Well those three collars were just begging to be constructed in three different colours, no?  I was simply itching to give it a try… and after all that Christmas shirt-making I had just the right selection of leftover scraps to piece together what I envisioned would be a kinda cool look.  Not just tri-coloured collars, but a tri-colour shirt, like allover…
I really like this sort of patched look.  The blocks of various blues together reminds me of those refashioned denim jeans garments that you see; made of cutting up and re-patching together old blue denim jeans to give a mixed up patchwork of varying shades of indigo.   It also reminds me a little of another look I admired in Celine pre-fall 2011, below.  Still going with that refashioned denim jeans vibe;  I’ve topstitched all the seams in orange.
The shirt is all shot cotton, bought here.  The left front and right back are Sky, the leftovers from this shirt, and the darker blue sections are True Cobalt, the leftovers from this shirt.  The right front and left back are of a very pale blue named Ice; and technically speaking this might not qualify as a leftover scrap.  I bought this about two years ago with the original intention of making another shirt for Craig, but the very pale baby-blue colour did not find favour… so I have gradually been using it up bit by bit for facing, pocket and lining purposes in other projects, but so far it has not been used in any publicly viewed part of a garment!  I managed to cut the pieces for this shirt out of what is left after all that nibbling.  So, does that make it a leftover, or not??
This cotton is thicker and more robust than the thin voile I used for my first cafe latte version of this shirt pattern, so the collars do not sit as flat together.  But on the other hand, the snaps on those buttonbands feel a lot more secure, and less likely to rip the fabric.  Speaking of the buttonbands; I wanted the third blue fabric to feature here, so the four of them have been constructed as separate wraparound bands that sit up over the body of the shirt.  That took a bit of extra fiddling and measuring, but nothing drastically difficult.

(below right; from Celine pre-fall 2011, source)
All the seaming in the body of the shirt is flat-felled, and the raw edges of the armhole facings have HongKong finishing, using bias strips cut from the Ice shot cotton.

Details:
Shirt; Vogue 1248, different shades of shot cotton, in Ice, Sky and True Cobalt, my review of this pattern here
Skirt; Vogue 1248, cotton voile, my review of this pattern here
Thongs; ??  crappy blue and white rubber things nicked from my son’s wardrobe.  I think he must have grown out of these years ago… 

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Burda 8071; a rogue’s gallery

12/01/2012 1:51 pm \ 23 Comments \

In my previous post I mentioned flippantly that I had used this pattern nine times, well I was wrong!  I have made ten dresses using this fantastically versatile pattern, or at least using key elements of it… and I like to think that the different fabric choices and other little twists have given each one their own distinct personality, so each one stands out as being different from the others in some way.
Below is version 1, never appeared here on the blog before.. because this is the best picture I have of it, and I no longer have the dress, unfortunately!  It was made straight -up to the pattern with no changes.  The fabric was quite interesting; white cotton with red taffeta ribbon sewn through in a criss-cross fashion just like a corset lacing, and also blue fabric cut into strips and sewn through the fabric in a running stitch  (difficult to describe)

Version 2, I still have, but have been using it as my painting dress for a few years.  Hmmm, taking real good care of my dresses, huh??  but anyway I was a bit over it and needed a painting dress sooo  (blush)  at least it is getting worn still, right?   The dress part is quilting cotton, printed with golden wattle (Australia’s national floral emblem), the bodice is denim, lined with green and white gingham, which is the fabric I used for the pocket flaps also. The little pockets have a pleat in them, and buttons from my grandmother’s stash, which will be retrieved before the dress is given the final heave-ho, don’t worry. I ran a naive style, pale yellow running stitch around all the denim edges…

Version 3, I no longer have this one either, nor even any pictures of it! but I have reproduced it here, hehe… (and just because I love mucking about, drawing fantasy dresses in my Fashionary)  This was of grey/silver metallic cotton, that had a dull metallic sheen to the surface… I made up the gathered bodice version of the pattern and used ivory piping cord for the bodice gathering cord come shoulder straps.  It was actually pretty cool, but the sheen on the surface of the fabric didn’t last very long…

Version 4; a cocktail dress, using pale pink silk taffeta, and with a heavily sequinned and embroidered overlayer.  Shifted the invisible zip closure to the right side seam and added net sleeves, attached to the shoulder straps.

Version 5; back to the princess seamed bodice, made of ivory broderie anglaise cheesecloth.  Have worn this one a bunch of times on this blog, and did a 6 different ways post on this dress too.  Just the colour and the very plainness of it has made it an incredibly useful little wardrobe builder, and it has been a staple in my wardrobe for the last four years or so… now sadly probably on its last legs if I’m being honest with myself… 🙁

Version 6; using an old navy-blue polo shirt of Craig’s for the dress part and some navy and white striped cotton for the bodice, this is still a hot weather favourite.  I used the sleeves of the Tshirt to make inseam side pockets in the dress also, and widened the body of the dress accordingly to accommodate them.  (dressmaking details here)

Version 7; adapted the princess seamed bodice to have wider shoulder straps.  This dress has an embroidered pale gold silk taffeta skirt and a pale green silk taffeta bodice.  I was never super happy with that bodice and eventually ended up removing it.  This is now a very successful high-waisted skirt.

Version 8; a beige/pale gold satin petticoat, made to wear under a silk-taffeta cocktail dress/coat.  It also went perfectly under this silk chiffon dress, that has been since passed onto Cassie, but I kept the petticoat! Don’t worry, she has her own petticoat…

Version 9; a pale pink satin petticoat, made to wear underneath my pink lace dress.  This ensemble has also been seen a tonne here on the blog…

and finally
Version 10; the Missoni knit and linen dress I posted about just previously.  With the gathered bodice, and with the body darts drafted out of the skirt piece, so as to keep the pattern of the fabric intact.

So!  Obviously this pattern has been enormously successful for me in my wardrobe and I highly recommend it!  It is simple, versatile and a creative and imaginative seamster can create looks all the way from extremely casual, to lingerie, to extremely glamorous, just by juggling about with different fabrics, different trims and employing a healthy dose of imagination  🙂

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Sorta Missoni

10/01/2012 4:29 am \ 41 Comments \

Firstly, thank you so much for all those lovely comments on my cardigan!  I was overwhelmed to read so many kind words… and with regard to my little rant; also to stress that I am not down on Burdastyle per se, which has so many talented and madly creative people to delight and inspire; but just their sucky anonymous ratings system…  yes anonymous.  A situation beloved by trolls, am I right?  It’s just a mystery to me why they’ve still got it…  but in short I shall continue to virtually hang-out at Burdastyle and contribute, while simultaneously and quietly acknowledging that the ratings system blows.  


But on to far more exciting affairs, ahem; my new dress.  The lovely Passiona Cottee sent me this gorgeousness in fabric form in a very generous give-away last year; thank you so much Passiona!
The fabric immediately struck me as very like a Missoni style of fabric, maybe a diffusion line?  I wish I knew for sure…  The fabric has the signature Missoni design; those distinctive stacked zigzags in a multitude of colours (although having said that I do actually possess a genuine Missoni scarf, seen here, that has hardly any zigzag).   Close inspection of my sample revealed seemingly every shade of green under the sun.  Das is gut.  Green is definitely me.  Adding interest to the colour mix; a bit of rust, a dash of salt-and-pepper, a hint of sky blue, the odd startle of vivid orange and even a few rows of ivory; all melding together in a disparate and yet pleasing cacophony of oily swampy shades… 
Missoni is a stalwart of the Italian fashion scene and so I wanted make it up into something Italian inspired, and dreamed up this design with a blouse-y linen bodice reminiscent to me of those loosely gathered Italian peasant tops…  I only had the teensiest bit of the knit fabric really.  Actually, (warning; eco boast following) I used basically the entire piece of fabric… and the bodice is the leftovers from this shirt… so the dress is green in more ways than the obvious, hehe…
I used Burda 8071, a real tried and true, standby pattern that I’ve used heaps of times before.  Lost count actually… (hmmmm just did a mental count, and including two dresses that have gone years ago, I’ve used this pattern nine times now.  Yowza!)
The dress piece was cut with the right side on the fold, to eliminate as much of this side seam as I could.  Also, in lieu of body darts which would have destroyed the regularity of the zigzag design, I cut the exact allowance of each dart from straight out of the side edges of the dress pieces (I’ve done this before too, for this dress here.  Works a treat for where sewn-in darts in the fabric are not what you really want, but you still want the shape). 
I hand basted the remainder of the right side side edge invisibly together from the right side to ensure the pattern was matched perfectly.
For the left side seam of the dress piece, I cut and sewed bias strips of the khaki linen along the seam allowance, to stabilise the knit fabric behind where the invisible zip is inserted… and the zip was hand basted in place, again so I had complete control of matching up those zigzags as closely as was humanly possible.  Yeah; I am neurotic that way, it’s OK I admit that… but I am pretty pleased with the results.

The lower hem, well unfortunately the lower edge of the fabric was not in super good nick and was already unravelling in some spots; the stitch loops were threaded through with one flimsy stay-thread which was not doing its job very well.  I carefully pulled this out bit by bit, darning where needed, hand embroidering the edge in a tightish blanket stitch leaving lumpy decorative (I hope!) blobs on the points of the zigzags.  I’m hoping it looks a bit like a crocheted edge…  just the type of crafty finish that I think finishes off this slightly rustic dress to peasant-y perfection.

Dress; Burda 8071, khaki linen and knit fabric.
side view … and I’m chuffed that I can barely tell that side seam.

and back…  Rustic frolicking-in-the-fields would ensue, except that it is a pretty warm day…
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Calico cotton cardigan

06/01/2012 6:29 am \ 58 Comments \

The good news: I’ve knitted a cardigan!
I bought this perfectly lovely ivory cotton yarn at the beginning of last spring, and started this cardigan when I had finished the garter stitch jacket.  I can be a pretty quick knitter if I’m in the mood…
The buttons; nacre, with that distinctive subdued sheen that I love, are favourites that I have used on many projects before.  They are from Fabulous Fabrics.
This is a great pattern.  I like the shaping, done in a dressmaking style like darts in the body, and not shaped in the side seams which is how I’ve knitted the shape into jumpers and cardigans up until now.  A good method.  I’m chuffed with this pattern, and will use it again.  With variations.
You see; I have bought up quite a lot of this yarn lately and so (this is embarrassing) as well as my fabric stash I now have a yarn stash too.  Up until now I have bought wool to knit up immediately leaving myself only with scraps and leftovers.
Why have I changed my ways? well now we come to the bad news:
I got word just before Christmas that the Jo Sharp Knit store here was closing down and was selling off its stock.  I am extremely sad about that.  I can’t bear when local stores and particularly local craft stores, close down.  But anyhow, of course I just had to pop in and check out the remaining stock, and bought… a bit… of yarn  😉  Now I have enough supply for at least a year’s worth of knitting, including a few more little cotton cardigans like this, so it is a good thing that this pattern worked out!

Details:
Cardigan; knitted by me, the Fitted Cardigan 04, version 1 with the lace edging and three-quarter sleeves, in Jo Sharp Soho Summer DK Cotton; colour Calico (shade 216)
Camisole (under) Country Road
Skirt; self drafted, charcoal jersey knit
Shoes; Bronx, from Zomp shoes

Ahem, I wasn’t sure whether to write about this here or not, since I don’t like to be all sulky sad-face here,  buuuut… my double sleeved shirt got such a low rating on Burdastyle that I removed the project.  I just felt so depressed about it.  Actually I don’t whether to even continue on that site.  I’m just losing faith in it a bit.  OK, a lot.  The ratings system is just too awful.  I know they’ve copped a lot of flack for having that rating system, I’ve been reading the complaints for years, but it is still there.  I don’t rate other people’s projects myself because I think to give a low rating is mean and counter-productive and often completely governed by personal taste. One might not choose to make or wear someone else’s project, but I reckon that is not a good enough reason to give it the thumbs down.  Speaking on behalf of my shirt, it was pretty darn well-made if I say so myself.  A tailored shirt is not an easy project, and is something that’s taken me a few shirts to perfect.  Particularly when I’m going to the effort to custom fit.  Which I am.  And as well, anyone who has attempted refashioning with an old garment will know it is way more of a challenge to get a good result than with a perfect piece of untouched new fabric.
Soooo, there it is.  Rant over.  Sorry about that.  Good natured posts should resume soon… once I’ve got over it.
Have a great day, everybody!

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A double-sleeved shirt

04/01/2012 3:39 am \ 18 Comments \


Remember I said I had made 6 shirts over the past month and a half?  well here ’tis t’ sixth!
This blue shirt was was intended for one of my boys and was pretty much finished, but I was getting more and more disillusioned with it and realising that they would probably not find it in the least bit cool.  The colour and the fabric are too flat, the style is too old, and the whole deal is not hip at all… :((   so I set it aside and made other plans for their pressies…
Then I recalled an editorial picture I had seen and loved, of a Celine shirt from pre-fall 2011; which appeared in that picture to have double sleeves.  A long sleeve of a different colour peeping out from underneath a prim high-collared short sleeve shirt…  I had loved this look and mentally filed it away for future use.  Now whammo realised that I had the perfect candidate all ready and waiting!!
So, I went online to find a picture from the original release of the collection (below) and saw straightaway that the sleeve that inspired me is not in fact a double sleeve, but appears to be a single and pieced sleeve with a seam at the midpoint… but by this time I was in love with my falsely inspired idea of the double sleeve and so this was what I set out to do…
I have had this long sleeve, white linen men’s shirt (below) sitting in my refashion pile for… ahem, mumble years.  Er, hazarding a guess at five? … cough cough.  It doesn’t fit anyone in my mob, but is still pretty well-made and the linen is a lovely fine quality.  I took the scissors to it and liberated its sleeves (the rest of the shirt will be put to good use, don’t worry…)

                                                  source

Taking the blue shirt; well I had to cut off my perfect flat felled sleeves and flat felled side seams (a wrench!) and resize the shirt to me, since all my boys are a lot bigger than me.  I’m afraid I just didn’t have the heart to go through re-flat-felling these seams again either, since I was getting severely “shirted-out” by the time I had got to this one; number six.  I was kind of like, oh yeah, whatever, run ’em through the overlocker  (brrrrrrrrr! and 10 seconds later) yup, that’ll do.
I didn’t unpick the pockets either, and just left them completely in situ.  This is why they appear quite big on my little chest and are disappearing into my armpits.  Hey, I can live with that.  The white linen sleeves were also quite massive on me so needed resizing as well… this turned out to be more challenging that it sounds, since the sleeve seam was a French seam and double top-stitched down in place.  Tricky!  I got there in the end, but the insides are not gorgeous… basically I ended up just overlocking the raw edges of my new seam and double top-stitching this down from the outside to match up with the remainder of the original seam as it goes down in the cuff.  The cuff and the placket both are perfectly double top-stitched, and I wanted to keep all that intact and mimic this finish as much as I could.  I think the seam matched up pretty good, yes?  Can you see where the old topstitching ends and the new begins?

I wanted the sleeves to be fully separate from each other as the white sleeve emerged from out of the blue sleeve, which was a bit of a puzzle to mesh together…  I ended up deciding to sew the blue sleevecap in flat, sew up and finish the sleeve and side seams of the shirt; and then after this set in the white linen sleeve.  This meant the white sleeves could only be machine stitched in so far.

I completed the set-in by hand.

Last step; to topstitch the allowances of both sleeves together down to the shirt body…

Just to show the garment full-length… (might not wear it this way much)

Luckily I hadn’t yet done the buttonholes on the shirt and so could put them on the “female” side of the shirt.  I love these gorgeous wooden buttons from Fabulous Fabrics, the same ones that Sam chose for his shirt here.

Details:
Shirt; Burda 7767 modified, of shot cotton in Sky and with long white sleeves from an old shirt
Skirt; Vogue 8363 modified, of burnt orange raw silk, details here, my review of this pattern here, and see this skirt styled in 6 different ways here
Shoes; Bensimon, from seed

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Flat-felling a curved seam

03/01/2012 7:52 am \ 27 Comments \

Flat-felling gives such a nice finish to tailored items, but if you try it out on a seam with a bit of a concave curve happening it can end up looking messy and not much of an improvement to the looks of the garment after all!
I wondered whether running a line of gathering stitched along the seam allowance might help to solve the problem of turning under that excess fabric around the curve and help it sit nice and flat.  So I tried it out on the sleeve cap seam allowance of the next shirt to roll out of the atelier, Craig’s birthday shirt, and it worked like a charm… I did take some pictures to illustrate but unfortunately a couple seem to have been lost in a recent computer clean-up  :(( so for the missing pictures I shall attempt to explain as best I can… 😀
So.
The sleeve cap  has been attached flat to the body of the shirt, and the sleeve and side seams of the shirt are still unstitched.  I want to flat-fell the seam allowance along that top curve of the sleeve cap.  The sleeve cap seam has been pressed up towards the body of the shirt…

Lift up the top layer of the seam allowance and snip the underneath allowance to just less than half its width, just as you would with a straight flat-felled seam (tutorial for that here)…

Now run a single line of gathering stitch along the wider upper curved seam allowance, at the halfwidth line.

Now turn under the raw edge along the line of gathering stitches, treating the line of stitching as the fold line.  If the curve is not very pronounced, the gathering may only need to be pulled in just a little…  Distribute and ease out the gathering as needed to achieve a flat a finish as possible.

Press and pin in place.

(missing picture here, sorry)  I topstitched the seam allowance down from the inside of the shirt; taking great care to keep the topstitching a perfectly even distance from the seam stitching, that is using the seam stitching as the guide to gauging the width of topstitching.  If you forget this and aim to topstitch using the folded edge as your guide, it may end up looking a little uneven on the right side (because not even the most careful of us is Perfect at folding under and pressing  an exact width fold), and this you want to avoid.  After all, the appearance on the outside of the garment is what counts!
To illustrate; here is the underarm at the 4-corner point where the sleeve seam meets the side seam: Below; inside the armhole, that flat-felled edging has a few little bumps along that folded edge because of the allowance not turning under completely even-width so doesn’t appear super perfect..

but below; the outside does.  So I’m OK with that…

(another missing-in-action shot, so below is an “after” shot) Now I stitched the sleeve and side seam in one go; and flat felled this seam allowance.

Because this seam here is a convex curve the seam allowance has less fabric along the raw edge than the seam, (rather than more fabric as in for a concave curve) and so it folds under more easily.  However because there is less fabric, you need to stretch out the seam allowance a little when flat-felling it down.  In my experience this is a lot easier to achieve than dealing with the excess fabric in a concave curve, but very rigid fabric may either need a bit of a snip around very tight curves, or alternatively a HongKong finish may be more suitable.

(Hmmm, diverted a little into mathematics territory there, but I hope that helped to illustrate the point!)

 

I don’t know I would bother with flat-felling the side-and-sleeve seam of a long sleeved shirt,; sewing neatly up the inside of a long tube is probably high up the list of things that are disproportionately difficult with consideration to actually how much it really improves the look of the shirt… but I’ve found sewing up the inside of a short-sleeved shirt to be OK and not too much of a hassle.

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