Tucked + Smock = Smucked shirt?

Wow, the whole month of May is almost gone. I realized when I logged in to start writing this post that there's a half-written one from two weeks ago when I wanted to write about having gone to some local fabric shops in Somerville and Cambridge... I will sum it up here: cheap and beautiful fabrics, one store well organized with cute quinceanera tiaras on display and the other like something out of Hoarders. Like, I was afraid that the fabric (crazy long pile neon pink tiger fur! shrek green sequins! beautiful white flocked cotton lawn! all piled to the ceiling!) was at any point going to topple and smother me. Luckily I was shopping with a friend, because I don't think the employees would ever have heard or found me in that barely lit shop.

Despite my criticism of the second shop, I bought this light weight teal poplin, and two other shirtings. I decided against making the jersey top that I was considering in this post because when I traced out the pattern I realized that it called for a facing in the neckline. I hate sewing facings into knit shirts, hate it, so that was an easy decision. I made the shirt with the tucked bib inset instead. It fits really well in the shoulders and is very loose from the bust down. It turns out that there were a few surprises.
It's got 4 tucks in the back, which with the gathers under the bib in front make this a pretty voluminous shirt. These tucks are each 5/8", which isn't clear from the pattern markings.

In this second picture you can see I pulled another Paul Smith button trick. I had only 4 white ball buttons and then used a clear ball button for the collar. You see the front band below the bib? This was the next surprise for me... it's supposed to be a hidden button placket. Well, I'm not about to make more buttonholes than I need to or hunt down more buttons than I have to. So I sewed the bands together with topstitching, the shirt's loose enough that you can pull it over your head so long as you unbutton most of the buttons on top.

And then, the biggest surprise which I'm not sure was operator error or a problem with the pattern draft. In the teal shirt, the bib didn't have enough seam allowance around the edge to set straight into the shirt front. You can see my wobbly seam at the corners. Somehow on my muslin, I'd managed to not only set it in straight with enough seam allowance but do a french seam! I think if I were to make another one of these shirts I would cut the bib with just a little extra around the edges to make sure that I can set it in straight, because it was really tricky to do this without getting the tucks caught in the seam.

edited to add: This is #124 from the March 2010 Burda issue.