The Tailored Shirt #3: More Pattern Confusion

Projects take a long time here at Line Of Selvage headquarters. Mostly it comes about through lots of puttering, but also because I’m sometimes too meticulous for my own good.

Pattern Tracing

Today I finished tracing and cutting out the pattern pieces from tracing paper.  The tracing paper is from a big roll of yellow artists sketch/tracing paper I bought at the art supply store.

trace_1

Some pattern pieces ready for tracing.

trace_2

The same pattern pieces traced, and ready to cut. Note the OCD nature of the tracing lines.

As you can see, I spend a lot of time tracing the patterns down to the last tiny detail. I can’t help it; I think it’s part of my OCD nature that comes along with being an engineer. In any event, the pieces eventually all got traced and cut out:

trace_3

There’s lots of pieces in this shirt; more than any pattern I’ve done to date.

Which leads my to my next set of discoveries – and mysteries – about this pattern.

Front Band

While tracing and cutting, I discovered this notation on the front piece:

left_front

Note the directions, “For left front Cut here”. That means the left and right fronts are not identical shapes. The right front has some more fabric in the center which is folded to make the right side front band (the one holding buttons on a men’s shirt). The left front, on the other hand, does not have the front band as an integral part of the piece; instead, it’s a separate piece of fabric that is folded, then sewn on to the left front:

directions_left_front_band

 

Why it is done this way, I do not know. It is different than the assembly detailed in Pam Howard’s class. But I can deal.

Back Pleat

Earlier, I said it looked like the pattern offered two shoulder pleats. Nope, it offers one big box pleat in the center. The pleat details are on the back piece, rather than the yoke. What I thought were pleat marks on the yoke are just notches.

back_pleat

Pleat markings, near the center fold of the back piece.

directions_pleat

Pattern instructions for making the box pleat.

So, that settles that. I’ll make it a box pleat, just because I don’t want to experiment at this time, but I’m guessing it wouldn’t be hard to change the pleat.

Collar

More confusion surrounds the collar.  Here’s all the collar pieces that came with the pattern:

collar_pieces

12 – collar. 13 – neckband. 14 – under collar. 15 – collar facing

Pieces 12 (collar) and 13 (neckband) are all that are used for Views A and B (casual style collar). Views C and D also use Piece 14 (the undercollar) and 15 (the collar facing).

For Views A and B, you are to cut two copies of Collar 12, and use them to construct the collar. From my class, I’m supposed to expect the undercollar piece to be smaller (by about 1/8 inch) to get the upper collar to turn and completely hide the lower collar. What’s interesting is that if you compare the undercollar and the upper collar, you find the pattern pieces, while not shaped exactly the same, are in fact the same size:

collar_undercollar

 

In this photo, I’ve overlapped piece 14 on piece 12, and they’re sized the same.

As I’m doing View A, I’m skipping pieces 14 and 15. But I may try to modify collar piece 12 so the one intended for underneath is a little bit smaller, as in the class. Time to review that video.

Tomorrow, finally, is the fabric layout and cutting.

 

 

 

 

2 thoughts on “The Tailored Shirt #3: More Pattern Confusion

  1. Kely

    I completely missed that for left front cut here part, I’m sitting here with the two pieces attached wondering why it doesn’t look right and decided to jump on the internet to see what I had did wrong…
    I guess now to grab the seam ripper and get to work

    1. mportuesisf Post author

      Glad I could be of assistance! I wrote up these blog posts in the hope they’d help people puzzling their way through this for the first time.

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