Friday, May 27, 2011

Project 17: Black Linen Dress Shirt

Well, that was fun! I just made my first dress shirt and it came together easily. I drafted myself a new pattern, taking all my favorite features from my current crop of dress shirts and combining them with some ideas of my own. The base material is black linen, which I purchased in bulk online from FashionFabricsClub.com. If you can buy the whole bolt, you save a great deal of money. This material would probably be about $18 a yard in a fabric store, but I got it for about $9 a yard by buying a 12 yard bolt.

I made the placket and collar band out of black silk dupioni. I hoped to add a touch of pizzaz, but it's too subtle, I think. My humble mistakes this time were:
  • Not turning under the seam allowance on the inside of the collar band before constructing it. That would have made the topstitching on the inside of the band come out much better.
  • After serging the side seams closed, I stitched them to the body of the shirt, but went a little quickly on one of them and made a swerve.
  • I put the button holes on the cuffs on the wrong sides again!!!!

I'm really looking forward to making the next dress shirt. If I've learned my lesson from the mistakes listed above then the next one is going to be hard to tell from a professionally made shirt. So. Excited.

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