Finished - a chambray Granville.

I was delighted when Helene from Stitch 56 wanted to know if any of her bloggers wanted to try the new Sewaholic Granville shirt - up went my hand, into the stash I dove and out came 2 options - some lovely lightweight chambray from Darn Cheap Fabrics or my crazy orange Paisley cat Liberty. I shook them in the face of my beloved and he chose the chambray, sensible chap that he is.

Now you can read all about it over at the Stitch 56 blog, but I am going to double up on a bit of content here, partially for my own records, and partially because my love was able to take some rather nice photos for me on our recent camping trip to Lorne, and it is SUCH a waste if I don't share some photos that don't involve my garage wall....

So the brief nitty gritty - I'm not a B-cup pear shape, I'm a bottom heavy C-cup hourglass - and therefore not the target body shape of the Sewaholic patterns, but clearly that didn't put me off, and I wouldn't let it put you off if this is a style you'd like to try. The sizing measurements are very true, and I think if you know exactly where you should deviate for your body shape, and make a muslin to double check it can be a great pattern for a variety of body shapes. 

I traced off an 8 shoulders and bust, and graded up to a 10 in the waist and hips. I'm very happy with the 8 in the shoulders, but in retrospect really should have gone with the 10 across the bust too (the lazy girl version of an FBA I guess). The sleeves are a bit too long (a common observation it seems!) but otherwise fit well. There's just a little bit too much flare in the hips for me, but otherwise I'm delighted with the fit. The princess seams in the back work wonders for my rather pronounced swayback, and I do love the shape of the collar. 

The instructions are fine, and I used them for most of the construction. I didn't do nearly as much top stitching as suggested as I was a bit short on time and my machine was giving me a little stinkeye (poor love needs to go off to a health retreat for a few days I think). Apart from the sleeve plackets (honestly I've become rather evangelical about hand basting tricky steps and cannot recommend hand basting the plackets enough. DO IT!) I ended up using a variety of online tutorials for some of the trickier steps:

Perfect collars - I've used this twice now and it really is great. I didn't bother cutting down the seam allowance on the seam that attaches to the collar stand. 
An alternative collar method #1 - this is a very well known and popular tutorial, and what I've used in the past, but not this time, as I wanted to try another that I'd found. I'll probably go back to this though. An alternative collar stand method #2 - this is what I used, and whilst it did make sewing the curved part of the collar stand very easy, I struggled to get a nice finish with my top stitching along the open seam at the top of the collar stand, even with hand-basting. It may well just be I need more practice though! I have read that reducing the seam allowance can help a lot with sewing a collar stand.....Shirt sewalongs - these two Archer sewalongs here and here are fantastic, and further proof that there are so many different techniques that can all produce great results. Sewing on buttons - such a simple thing I know, but this is a wonderful tutorial from Maris and I can attest that it is truly very quick and easy!Sewaholic shirt making advice - Tasia is right in the middle of a series of shirt making posts - the summary can be found here. I'm very keen to see what else she suggests to add some finesse to my future shirts. 

Any further shirtmaking tips or links would be much appreciated - there's always so much to learn! 

So that's my Granville version 1.0! Very wearable, and a predictably impressive pattern from Sewaholic. Now I just need an equally stylish version for my beloved (come on Thread Theory!)....