Shirt Making

The Process of Making a Man's Shirt

A traditional style shirt has long sleeves with cuffs, a collar and a long front slit from collar to bottom hem that is lined on one side with buttons and the other with buttonholes. The cuffs may either be fastened by buttons or by cufflinks. Buttons on shirts for men sit on the right side, while buttons on shirts for women sit on the left. Shirts may further be distinguished by various types of cuffs and of collars. Further down the page we have set out a fuller description of the shirt-making process, in simple terms, aimed at lovers and wearers of formal shirts rather than anyone intending to make a shirt for themselves.

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Making a Shirt

Fabric to be used for a shirt can be cotton, linen, wool, silk or a polyester blends. Paper patterns can be bought for many different types of shirts. This example uses the most common type of shirt pattern. To make a average size shirt, you will need a piece of fabric 150 cm wide and two and half metres long. From that piece of fabric, you lay out and pin the paper patterns to make best use of the entire piece of fabric before cutting out the various parts to be sewn together into a shirt.. The fabric parts are:

• One body, including both the back and the two front panels, 240 cm long x 80 cm long
• Two sleeves, each 60 cm long x 70 cm wide
• Two underarm gussets, each 8 cm long x 8 cm wide
• Two neck gussets, each 8 cm long x 8 cm wide
• Two shoulder pieces, each 18 cm x 7 cm wide
• One collar, 14 cm long with a width equal to the circumference of the wearer's neck plus 5 cm plus 1-2 cm for seam allowance
• Two slit gussets, each 6 cm long x 6 cm wide
• Two cuffs, each 5 cm by a width equal to the width of the wearer's wrist plus 2 cm plus 1-2 cm for seam allowance

A gusset is a diamond-shaped piece of fabric that is inserted within a seam to add some breadth or to reduce tightness. Best sewing techniques to use are flat seams, where two pieces of fabric are joined edge-to edge without any overlap, and any type of stitching that encloses the raw edges.

The first step is to make cylinders out of the fabric for the sleeves, leaving a 8 cm lengthwise slit at one end - turn the edges of that slit in twice and sew them. Sew on cuffs to each sleeve at that end. Attach an underarm gusset to each sleeve at the end opposite the slit, leaving one point of the diamond free to attach to the body. Set the sleeves aside.

With each shoulder piece, make a 6 cm slit in a narrow end and sew in a neck gusset, the unattached half of which will be used to attach to the collar.

Create the chest slit by folding the body piece width-wise so that the front section is 8 cm less than the back section - mark the top fold with chalk as the shoulder line. Fold in half the other way with the front section out. Cut the chest slit along that fold from the shoulder line down to the end. Cut along the shoulder line from the chest slit out toward the sleeves, stopping about 10 cm short. Insert the combined shoulder piece and sew together.

Mark the top of the combined piece against the quarter sections of the collar from the middle out. Gather a pleat to fit the collar to all the marks before sewing each stitch.

Attach the sleeves to the body with the underarm gusset and to the shoulder piece. Make a slit in the side of the body from the bottom all the way up to the end of the underarm gusset. Insert and sew in the slit gusset to complete the torso of the shirt.

Fold over the edges of the front slit and sew to create a placket for the buttons and button holes. Buttons are sewn on through both layers of fabric. Buttonholes are created by slitting both layers and then double-stitching the edges. The top buttonhole is horizontal; the rest are vertical.