New Shirt for Me!

So a few months ago, I bought myself a new shirt, to wear in our family pictures.  

Despite my crazy face in the picture, I love the shirt.  Except for the sleeves.  It has these weird flutter sleeves that do nothing for me.  Nothing.  So, I always cover them up with a jacket.  I've been thinking lately that I should just replace the sleeves, but I haven't found a fabric that matches well enough to do it. And to be honest, I didn't want to mess up the shirt.  Anyway.  So yesterday, during my restful Sabbath, I decided to just attempt to make a new version of the shirt, with a sleeve I like.  I did my best at creating pattern pieces based on the original shirt.  My result:

Have to be honest, I'm kind of in love with the result.  I feel like it's the little details that totally make the shirt--the cuffs on the sleeves, the buttons, the gathers, and the neckline.

My first ever (faux!) button placket.  

I feel I must have you note, though, that the bottom has yet to be hemmed.  Not by my choice, but by the choice of my machine.  (We're in a serious power struggle these days.  She thinks it's ok to skip 5 stitches in a row, I tend to disagree.  The sewing machine repair shop seems to think it's basically unfixable.  Truly a sad day).  So, if I ever get a machine that works again, I'll be hemming this baby up.  The vast majority of this shirt was actually done on my serger.  The neckline and button placket are the only pieces sewn on by my machine, and had to be redone a number of times to make them look reasonable and hide all the skipped stitches.  :(

Anyway, enough sob story from me, here it is on:

Yeah, I kind of love it.  Next time I'll make the sleeves slightly looser, but other than that, seriously, I'm so happy with how it came out.