Using an old shirt as a pattern for a new one

One of my favorite shirts was coming to the end of its useful life. There was a huge hole in the left sleeve, and I didn't see a way to fix it, so I decided I'd rather use the shirt for making a pattern for a new one.

I cut open all the seams and got confirmation for what I had been suspecting. I always thought the seams were a bit twisted, and folding the front piece in half showed me that it was the case. This meant that I had to make the patterns as halves, so I cut from the fold and kept the wider half, which I cut a bit narrower while straightening the side.

Here are the pieces I used as patterns. The back piece needed straightening as well, because it was just as twisted as the front.

Here are the new front and back. The pattern in the fabric would have been very hard to align at the edges, so I just made sure they were aligned vertically, that is, the colors matched at the seams.

I even matched the colors in the sleeves. I could have saved some fabric by not doing this, but I wanted the sleeves to be identical. I have seen shirts on sale for which this has not been done, and I think it's just lazy (unless it's part of the design).

I'm not good at getting the sleeves right, so I decided to assemble the shirt in slightly wrong order. After sewing the pieces together as shown in the photo below, I sewed all the side seams. I sewed them from the arm pit to wrist and arm pit to waist, so it was four seams. At least the arm pit seams are extra strong as the seams overlap there for a bit. 

My sewing machine is Pfaff Passport 3.0 and has the following stitches. I used number 15 for combining the pieces and number 12 for all the edges where the fabric was folded. 

Here is the finished shirt. It's the right size and feels very comfortable, so I'd say it's a success. And now I have the patterns for making more of these, if I want (if I happen to find some nice fabric I want to make into a shirt).