June's Asian Archer

I know, I know...I'm a little early but I thought I would get June's Archer shirt off my plate. I spied this Robert Kaufman panel print cotton at High Fashion a few weeks ago and couldn't get it off my mind... envisioning, of course, some kind of Archer for the 12 month Archer sew-along. I've not worked with a panel print before and didn't really know what I was doing. (I find I'm at my most creative when I'm flying by the seat of my pants...lol) Each panel was about 24" long and I bought 4 of them which was a little over 2.5 yards.

 

 

 

I also bought 1 yard of a another Robert Kaufman Asian inspired print, and while it was not technically a companion fabric, the selvedge color dots had a lot of common colors:

 

 

 

 

I decided to cut the back, front and sleeves from the panel print and then work on where to cut the other pieces after that. Originally, I cut the long sleeves as per the pattern but I felt there was too much going on "fish-wise" and I opted to cut them off. I really like it with short sleeves. I then decided to cut the yoke, front button band and collar from the companion fabric.

 

During one of my fittings in front of the mirror it occurred to me that if I left off the collar and put on only the band, it would enhance the Asian look by creating a mandarin collar.

 

Back yoke:

 

 

 

 

Front band:

 

 

Mandarin collar:

 

 

 

The only other changes I made were to leave off the pockets and take the sides in a bit to give a little definition to the waist area.

 

Experimenting with the panel print was great fun! The possibilities could have been endless for placing the smaller pieces around and fussy cutting on the panels but I decided to keep it simple and use the other fabric for those.

 

Who knows what creative juices next month's Archer will stir up? I'm finding this 12 month sew-along to be a really fun challenge to see how many looks I can get from this pattern.

 

Happy sewing...