Budd shirt side seam

[tmakos]

Hello!

He learned tailoring and sewing in a self-taught way, I watch a lot of YouTube videos for this. I found one in which Kirby Allison visits a Budd shirt maker, where the shirt sleeve seam (and the side seam of the shirt as well) is sewn together with a rolling presser foot. It was interesting to see that it was not made with a French seam. What do you think about this solution?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BZdYkIlawo

[Gerry]

Turnbull & Asser also do it, IIR.

I played around with this method for a test garment. You need a 2:3 seam ratio (at least that's how I did it) from front to back, which is the main reason I didn't stick with it (it eats up cloth).

The back wraps over the front by a single seam, then both layers are turned again by a seam and fed through the hemmer foot. It's surprising easy to do this by eye, with nothing more than a brief finger-press before commencing sewing. However, as always the best results are to be had by pressing everything in advance. Once hemmed, the seam is top-stitched down to fell it flat.

The end result is strong, flat, neat and professional looking. It's bulkier, however. Not visibly from the outside, just a thicker seam. So you can only really use this technique with a set in sleeve (preferably with an offset seam). If you tried to do a sleeve and side in one go, you'd never get over the seam with the sleeve (not cleanly, at any rate). Might be different with an industrial foot, but not with one for a domestic machine.

The standard way of felling side seams - folding the front seam over a little past the needle so that its edge catches in the stitching - can be equally neat/professional if an edge guide is used. You can see that being used below, in a video showing how Emma Willis' company do it; though pressing the fold in advance, and pressing the sewn seam before felling - plus pulling from behind as well as from the front as you sew - gives a cleaner seam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU8OCHdJ-d8

[tmakos]

Hi Gerry!

Interesting!

So, does that mean there is actually another stitching in the Budd video that they left out? Because it seems like there are two stitches next to each other at the sleeves, but if I saw it correctly, they are using a single-needle sewing machine. Do you need to construct the offset sleeve differently? I'm thinking of the sleeve cap.

[Gerry]

It's been a while since I watched that video, so I may be wrong, but I think they missed out the top-stitching part. Just as they miss out the sewing of the set-in sleeve (IIR). Annoying, but how is the editor to know that tailoring nerds are interested in this stuff!

The seam is offset by simply taking a slice off the front and adding it to the back. This moves the sleeve seam more towards the front. I draft a sleeve the normal way but deliberately leave the ends flat in order to make this easier. I simply shift things along when drawing the sides, by about 3/8 inch. Alternatively, you can splice a pattern and tape it together (never done this, though). I'm not a professional shirt-maker, though, this is just my understanding of things (take it or leave it!) 

You can see a forward seam in the following link (scroll down). Many claim that it's a sign that the sleeve has been pitched perfectly. It's to reduce bulk IMO.

https://suitsupply.com/en-us/journal/the-hallmarks-of-a-quality-shirt.html

[Gerry]

The test garment I made ended up being cannibalised for collar draping. However, I still have a test sample. It's a bit confusing because the cloth is printed, so the front looks like the back (and vice versa) when viewing the outside vs the inside. The stitching was deliberately kept large to save on thread, and to be able to unpick everything if need be. A 1/4 inch hemmer was used.

Interior:

https://flic.kr/p/2ordP15

Exterior:

https://flic.kr/p/2oraVYL

[Petruchio]

Most shirtmakers I know here in Vienna also do it this way. I always thought one of the reason might be that making the side gusset is far cleaner/easier this way.

[tmakos]

Hello Petruchio,

I am writing from Győr, Hungary, which is not far from Vienna, Austria. I assume this type of communication speeds up the process