I’ve been devoting so much time to my Tuxedo Shirt project that I haven’t had time to blog as I go. I’ll fill in more details after the job is done, but here’s an update in the interim.
Fitting
After several rounds of fitting, the good news is that I’ve arrived at a shirt pattern that fits the client.
I got a trial-by-fire lesson in sleeve fitting, which I had not had a chance to practice on myself before trying out on the client. After draping the muslin and tracing out the client’s armscye directly on the muslin, I drafted a new sleeve to match.
I started by making a new sleeve pattern, using a draft I learned in Paul Gallo’s patternmaking and design course I took in January. Contrary to the original sleeve that came with the model shirt, and also contrary to many men’s dress shirts, I used a much higher sleeve cap based upon measurements from my client.
Here’s the first sleeve draft that I produced; it was a little tight around the bicep and the wrists because I didn’t get the measurements right. But you get an idea of the overall shape of the sleeve cap. The solid pencil is the stitching line, I added both 1/2 inch (dashed) and 5/8 inch (red) seam allowances.
