194: Cutting a Man’s Shirt to Match

My son Andrew has been so helpful with filming and editing our videos, shown on PhillyCAM.org, the local Philadelphia TV station, on my YouTube channel, and with the posts on my Instagram account, that I wanted to make him a special Hawaiian shirt.

Fabric purchase:

Although I almost always buy fabric from our outstanding fabric shops here in Philadelphia, this time I went online and found Hawaiian cotton fabric that both Andrew and I liked.  When it arrived in the mail I could see we had made a very good choice.

Washing the fabric:

The first step was to wash the cotton fabric in hot water and dry it in a hot dryer.

It can take 50 washings before all chemicals are removed. Plus, cotton has a tendency to shrink. I would like to think all fabric is safe, but many chemicals may have been used in its production, so I wash all fabric.

Cutting to match:

• This fabric required cutting to match. I had bought extra fabric to make sure I would have enough.  The most important pieces to match are the left and right-front shirt patterns. After marking the pocket location on the left-front shirt pattern, I laid the left-front shirt pattern over the fabric where the pocket would look best. Then I laid the right-front pattern’s center-front line over the left-front pattern’s center-front line, using my L-squares to make sure the cross-grains were aligned with the fabric’s selvages.
• Next I traced the underlying fabric’s pattern onto the right-front pattern so I could re-lay the right-front pattern over the same pattern in another area of the fabric.
• A man’s yoke should be cut so the straight grain lies from armhole to armhole. But to allow the yoke to match the back shirt, I cut the yoke with its straight grain down the center of the back. To give the yoke the strength it needed across the shoulders, I fused the top yoke.

How I sewed the shirt:

• Once cut, the next step was to sew the shirt together using the industrial techniques I had written and diagrammed in Copying a Man’s Shirt.
• I referred to my book, Copying a Man’s Shirt, for the information I had discovered when I was writing Copying a Man’s Shirt and researching how the industry cuts and sews men’s shirts. I had made my first shirt using home-sewing methods, which took forever. It was then I realized the industry HAD to be doing something different.
• When I was in the industry I always worked in women’s apparel, so had no experience with men’s clothing production. But I knew the industry used different methods than those presented in home-sewing instructions. Otherwise how could a shirt, manufactured offshore, sell for $20?
• Because I am a technical designer, it was fairly easy for me to examine some of my husband’s shirts and discover how the men’s apparel industry manufactures men’s shirts.

Copying a Man’s Shirt is full of the industrial procedures I discovered then. I now cut and sew a man’s shirt in less than a third of the time it took me, using home-sewing techniques, to make the first man’s shirt.

• The industrial techniques presented in the book, written when I was developing and college-classroom testing the book several years ago with my continuing professional education students, which included design-room personnel, enabled me to draft and fit Andrew’s shirt in a reasonable amount of time. The Hawaiian shirt, shown in this blog post has short sleeves. Copying a Man’s Shirt shows how to fit and sew long sleeves.
• I now have to look inside my husband’s shirts to see if my label is in my husband’s shirts. Otherwise I don’t know if we bought, or if I made the shirt.

Copying a Man’s Shirt is 20% off through December 31, 2024.  Use coupon code:  shirt

Working through this book you will also discover how to take a pattern off a ready-made garment, which I do all the time. The patterns developed in the industry are easier to use and up to date with the fashion trends. No stitching or labels are removed. After I have copied a purchased garment I return it to the store, something done all the time in the industry. This is completely legal, as there are no copyrights on garments.