Plaid Gauze Archer

I finished my second Archer! Hooray! I stumbled upon a fabric destash on Instagram one day in the Summer and fell in love with this plaid gauze fabric. It was a 3 yard piece for something like $15 so I snapped it up right away with an Archer in mind.

I have been wearing my olive chambray Archer quite a bit now that it is Fall.  I am really excited to have another one in the rotation– especially since the colors in this plaid really feel very autumnal. I didn’t make any changes to sizing for this view (size 10 graded to 14 at the hips) other than slimming the sleeves and cuffs down to a size 8. My main quibble with my first Archer is that the cuffs are really loose.

This fabric was fairly difficult to work with because it’s very crinkly. I gave it a good press before I started cutting to make it as non-crinkled as possible. I think this was the best plan of attack to keep it from being too big as a finished garment. I cut my yoke, button band, pockets, and cuffs on the bias and these pieces seemed to keep growing after being cut. I had to go back and trim them back down to size before applying the interfacing (and a little bit after applying the interfacing!)

I found it was best to use my walking foot for all of the construction or the seams ended up really wavy. My walking foot isn’t really ideal for topstitching– it was hard to get the topstitching very close to the edges of the collar and cuffs. I think about 1/4″ from the edge was the best I could do. I decided to stick with the sleeve placket that came with the pattern instead of trying to do a tower placket on this fabric. I also didn’t bother with flat felling anything, instead I serged the seams and topstitched them down.

I ran into a real struggle with the fabric when it came time to do the button holes. My machine’s button hole foot has a sensor wheel that somehow figures out when to change directions and complete the button hole. Well, this fabric was so flimsy off to the side of the button placket that the sensor foot couldn’t figure out when to stop. I had to unpick my first button hole about 3 times because it kept being suuuuuper long. I finally tried pinning some layers of scrap fabric to the underside of the shirt front to bring it up to the same thickness as the button placket.  Once I figured out this trick it was much easier to get the button holes finished.

Strangely, the sleeves on this Archer have come out longer than my first one. I’m sure it is because of the nature of the fabric. I plan to wear them rolled up anyway so it’s not a huge deal. The cuffs are still too large– I can roll them up twice without having to unbutton the cuffs. I just cut a flannel Archer this weekend and I trimmed the cuffs and sleeves down one more size. I hope they will be better!

I am really happy with my new Archer and I have worn it quite a bit in the week since I finished it! What is everyone else sewing these days?

~Teri

p.s. I was inspired by Gillian’s most recent Better Pictures Project post and I played around with editing these photos. I tried some things that I haven’t tried before– mainly adjusting the contrast and sharpening the photos.  I am loving her series so far!