the henry shirt.

 This Henry shirt has been languishing for days, waiting for buttons.  It's a bit of a challenging pattern to be just a little boy's shirt.  Ignore his crying, by the way.  He just hates wearing clothes.  Which is tooooo bad.

The raglan seam that connects the yoke to all the other pieces is a monster and you have to sew it twice: once for the outer portion and once for the lining.  I did end up with some "accidental gathers" along that seam, but I can't even bring myself to care.  I doubt anyone will notice and if they do idgaf.  Somehow I'm compelled to post pictures of them anyway, though, so here you are.  I'm going with "design element": slightly gathered through the shoulders anyone?

What finally stalled me on this shirt were the buttons.  After all that work was I really going to just sew on plain old boring stash buttons?  I decided I wanted, no, needed fish buttons, like these or these or these.  Actually those last ones I didn't see til just now, I may have to buy them...  Not that $10 buttons are in the budget right now, but a girl can dream.  Fortuitously (or so I thought) a Joann's 40% off coupon arrived the same day.  I went to the nearest Joann's (a pitiful excuse for a store) and they did not have one single fish button.  But then again, perhaps it was kismet because I have a serious crap-ton of buttons that I ought to use.

This morning I got up and decided that the only person who would ever notice the lack of fish buttons was me, and I could live with it.  I did pick some marled buttons that remind me of seashells out of the stash, though (yay for compromise).

Too bad I didn't have 4 matching ones.  I ended up using 2 dark and 2 light.

I cut out the 2/3 size for my 3 year old but lengthened it by an inch and a half.  It fits him just right with some room to grow (out only, not up; it's just the right length).  This shirt is cut really wide and my boy isn't.  All his store bought clothes are really wide and short on him.  That's why we sew, though, right?  Now he has some clothes that fit him =)  And this shirt definitely fits perfectly.  If only I can get him to wear it.

I also lengthened the pocket piece by quite a bit.  I read some reviews on the blogosphere that said the pockets were too wide and shallow to be useful.  He hasn't tried these out yet but I think they'll hold his stuff.

The fish print is a "vintage" sheet I from the thrift (I love fish stuff!) for $2.50 (and half price day!) and the blue is from a shirt my dad donated.  The shirt was fraying badly at the hems and had developed some holes and lost some buttons, but it's ooohh sooo soft.  Hopefully it holds up til he outgrows it.

I'm pretty excited that I can play along with the "Sewing for Boys" Sew Along over at Boy, Oh, Boy for the first time.  A little late to the party, but aren't I always?  I can't help but ruminative that misery loves company...  I swear it wasn't really that bad though.