Burda 'origami' shirt 07/2016 #114 here I go again with the weird white shirts for summer, love this one! PLUS Ten More Days for E-Book Bargains

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Meanwhile, I see you're still here, so back to sewing! Here is a quick white shirt, Burda's 'origami' shirt 07/2016 #114 that I used as a palate cleanser after quite a frustrating struggle with a linen jumpsuit. (More on the jumpsuit later.)

In the harshest summer morning Swiss mountain light, you can see the structure that is built into this shirt, although it's been ironed to appear pretty flat to the ordinary eye.

Anybody recall that last summer I went out on a limb and did two of Burda's weirder white shirts—one a Kenzo knock-off detailed here, Kenzo knock off white shirt
 and the other, a Margaret Howell 'big shirt' look
Fugly Margaret Howell big white shirt look

that I saw daringly worn only by Solange and which required some modification to keep the back pleats in place while wearing?

Okay, I've already re-worn both this summer and, heartened by the success of using cheap IKEA Ditte cotton bleached super-white for super-cheap experimental summer white shirts, I tackled this checkboard origami baby, July's model 114. What was the risk? At most, a few hours,  5 francs worth of fabric and five or six recycled buttons.

NB, once bleached stark white or home-dyed, Ditte is an excellent fabric to work with for experiments, muslins or models that are a little too memorable to be endless investment classics. For example, I used Ditte for my Celine 'painted blouse' knock-off as well as well as for a second go-round with the April 2010 grandfather shirt from Burda which I wear all the time at home year-round.

But be warned that this cheap, cheap 100% IKEA cotton is a bit spongier in hand than more expensive broadcloth. It requires starch and a strong hot ironing arm to approximate a 'crisp' look like the one you see in the blue grandfather shirt.

For this summer's experiment, I didn't have the requisite wash-out interfacing onto which the Burda people wanted me to position the pre-seamed and turned tunnels of fabric into a checkboard pattern for the plastron. So I just interwove, pressed and then machine-basted the prepared and turned pieces onto my tissue paper with the grid marked in pencil, zigzagged tightly around the edge of the plastron, keeping the pattern tissue paper free, and then carefully removed the basting stitches and paper to use for the weaving of the remaining pieces into the second side. Before zigzagging, I trimmed away all the extraneous hang-over of the tunnels for a finished look.

Before final insertion of the tricksy woven plastron, I double-checked the alignment of my checker-boarding and saw that two of the tunnels needed adjusting, so that required a little picking and restitching around the end.

The rest of the blouse/shirt was so easy that I'm tempted to do another, this time making the plastron some kind of variation, like pintucks or horizontal pleats or maybe a contrast fabric or color.

So here's my version. I luuuurrrve it to bits, worn in the photo above with the 2-2014-109 white skirt, also made for pennies from IKEA's white Lenda fabric My Ralph Lauren look for pennies