Yet Another Archer Shirt

This is at least my 5th Archer. I made my first one back in 2014 and I still wear it often. That Italian cotton shirting wears like iron. 

Anyway, over the years I managed to lose my original pattern. I have the pieces I traced 10 years ago and I've managed to stumble through the construction by clinging to the sew-along on YouTube. This time I had some basic questions that I didn't want to have to hunt around to answer. Like what is the seam allowance? 

So, even though I'm a cheapskate I decided to buy another copy of the pattern, and I'm glad I did. I've gotten so much use from this pattern that the designer deserves another 20 bucks from me. Plus, Grainline has updated some of the pattern pieces and construction methods. And by post-stalking myself I realized that back in 2014 I blended three sizes when tracing. I went from a 6 at the bust to a 2 at the hips. No wonder my Archers feel a tad snug over the butt these days. I think I'll bite the bullet and do a new tracing when I hop on Version 6.

This time around I used a blue and gray plaid that I got from Cali Fabrics for something like $6 a yard. At that price, even I was willing to pop for two yards. The fabric was something like 60 inches wide. I felt like I had oceans of yardage. I could easily put the cuffs, outer yoke and button band on the bias, and I could even try to match the plaid at the side seams. 

Yeah, it seemed like oceans of fabric until I realized I cut the right front pattern piece off-kilter and it was going to be obvious enough to make my eyelid twitch. So I recut that. Oh, and I messed up the cuffs, so they were cut twice. It went on like that, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out in the end. 

The fabric is 100% cotton and it was stable enough to fray very little (I'm looking at you, handkerchief weight linen). It's also pretty light weight, so the areas where the layers stack up weren't too hard to handle. Unlike like my corduroy version. Or my flannel version.

Version 6 goes great with jeans and it complements many of my skirts and shorts. I'm glad I added it to the stable.

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here.