birthday shirt for bill

After spending 48 hours alone at home, during which time I could have sewn anything I wanted in complete secrecy, I thought of making Bill a shirt for his birthday. But by the time I came up with this, he and Frances were already on their way home from the desert field trip. So I got it cut out Sunday afternoon and then frantically sewed Tuesday and Wednesday, while turning a blind eye to the dishes, groceries, and housecleaning, and finished it with plenty of time to take pictures!

The bowling-shirt design is a modification of the pattern I used for Bill's Hawaiian shirt. I attempted this modification on a more traditional men's shirt pattern a few years ago, but I could see right away that I needed to use a spread-collar shirt as the base. I paid particular attention to matching the patterned fabric -- didn't I do a nice job?

I found a place for my label at the bottom of the front -- I was worried it would be too itchy in the neck and I thought of all the many labels I have cut out of clothes. That wasn't going to happen here!

And here's the "keeping it real" picture -- this is the melted interfacing from the shirt front. When they say fusible I don't think the idea is to fuse it to the iron. It took a good 10 minutes with the magic sponge and some very careful knife scraping to fix this. When will I learn to check the temperature?!