Hi - here is my first attempt at a dress shirt. Overall I'm pretty happy with the fit, but I'm curious what people think about a few elements:
Neck: I think it's a little loose, but I'm not sure how/where to adjust on the front parts and the shoulder/back yoke. I feel like if I move those in, thus shortening the circumference, I'm going to get the shirt bunching up. Maybe I further increase the curve of the collar band so it tapers more?
Sleeves: Small thing but I need to lengthen the sleeves maybe 1-1.5cm. It's fine with arms straight, but I'd like a little extra so there's no pulling when arms are folded.
Back, around armscye: should I care what the back looks like? I feel comfortable in it, it gives me range of motion and I don't feel pulling behind me when seated with hands on a desk (I will be wearing this to work), but looking at the photos I wonder if it's off around the arms. I'll do a separate post with pattern images.
(https://i.postimg.cc/nXGwndKg/IMG-5205.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/nXGwndKg)
(https://i.postimg.cc/jWq32zZ5/IMG-5206.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/jWq32zZ5)
(https://i.postimg.cc/DWCjX8Mc/IMG-5208.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/DWCjX8Mc)
Firstly, it's not bad Evan, well done. However, a couple of things scream out at me.
Your collar is being pulled down at the CF which is scrunching it at the sides, because you've cut your collar quite high at the back and sides. That's not necessarily bad, because you have a reasonably long neck, but you'll have to raise the height of the collar-stand at the front to prevent the scrunching; and/or reduce the height at the sides and back.
If you undo the first button, the collar will probably lift, straighten and look better; which will give you some idea of how much to raise things at the front. Adding a miniscule amount of curvature towards the collar tips will also help the collar to sit better at the sides; it also allows the collar to sit flatter at the front, which will help; though this flatness is achieved by spreading the collar by a tiny amount, which you may not like. This isn't 'law' BTW, a straight line to the tips springs the front, which suits some better. If you do add some curvature, try to keep things as a straight line at the very tips, as it's easier when turning the points. Get the general height-balance from front to back sorted out first, though (curvature may not be necessary, unless you want it for aesthetics).
At the back you have a slight pool of cloth right below the nape of the neck. Your pattern probably has a shoulder angle slightly sloped for your square shoulders; which are pulling the shoulder tips up, allowing the neck area to collapse down in turn creating that fold/pool of excess cloth. The shoulders need to be cut a little squarer (more cloth going up to the shoulder tips at the back). The yoke pattern is all that needs adjusting, really.
PS, find a shirt that you own which has a collar that fits nicely round the neck. Use that as a guide for height.
I'm sure others will chime in with more observations, but on the whole it's pretty good.
Yes, well done!
My tips for the collar: do a fitting without collar and have a look, wether the neckhole has the perfect shape. If yes, controll,wether the collar band has the exactly right length for the neck hole. I also would recommend to install marks where the band should meet the yoke seams and the center back, so you can avoid shifting while pinning and sewing.(My impression is,your neckhole is probably not wide enough or not scooped out enough at the front)
Make the collar of some stiff material for the fitting, so you can slash it to find out wether it needs more curve to lay smooth.
And I also think the back needs some attention. It should look more relaxed. It seems you have strong shoulder blades. Now the shirt body sags from the folds outwards and is pulled under the arms. I think it needs wider darts at the yoke seam (horizontaly from the shoulder blades to the armhole).
Also for the armhole seam some notches help to install the sleeve more exactly. In the long run notches help a lot in assembling a shirt fast and exactly especially for your own shirt pattern.
The side view shows a somewhat swayed or hollow back. In a draft you would push the waist forward a half cm or 1 cm forward, which might sort out a few problems. Although you might have to do a measure of balance to tidy it up again.
Where is your pattern from please?
G
Posting pattern pics here - I'll do a separate post processing/responding to some of the recommendations
Yoke
(https://i.postimg.cc/18scZm5F/IMG-5211.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/18scZm5F)
Front part (with cut on placket)
(https://i.postimg.cc/Kkkt54Q6/IMG-5212.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/Kkkt54Q6)
Back part
(https://i.postimg.cc/RJwfj8kG/IMG-5213.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/RJwfj8kG)
Collar stand and collar (without seam allowance)
(https://i.postimg.cc/fJjmCGjR/IMG-5214.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/fJjmCGjR)
So, broadly speaking the trickiest part I had was with the neck and the collar. This pattern is based off a casual shirt pattern I've used for a few shirts with good results, but I'd noticed that it sat a little off of my neck at the shoulders and came down low across my chest; and as a result, a very loose collar. So, I did as Peterle had suggested and first made a muslin with no collar so I could see where I could get it closer to my neck and allow me to make a more snug collar - this resulted in me adjusting the front part to bring up the CF line, plus I lengthened where the yoke and front part meet to bring it closer to my neck at my shoulder. This done on the collar-less muslin looked good to me in the mirror. On the dress shirt itself the result was still a sort of loose collar, but I'm not sure where to adjust so I can tighten it up. Following the DPC advice, I made up and constructed the back/yoke/front parts so I had the complete neckline before determining the final measurement for the collar, and stay stitched so that wouldn't get distorted.
The collar was copied from an existing shirt that I liked which had a fairly large collar, I liked how that sat in a suit jacket, though when I made my first version based on that the collar stand at the front was - I thought - too tall, so I shortened the stand at the front and added some curvature (you can see where in the collar stand pic).
Ok, thank you for that. You can't really do alterations for sway back in this case, since that sort of consideration needs to be done at the drafting stage.
It's sound logic to me to do a yoke on a muslin in order to avoid distortion in the cloth, although it does mean a bit of extra work. If the muslin cloth were stiffer, and you worked quickly and carefully, you wouldn't need to do that.
Before going on to the collar and stand, I am bothered by the ripples on the left front. Are they just a button placement problem? If not you will need to re-think the left front, because there are also ripples evident out at the scye/armhole. I would recommend starting by checking the button placement, even go as far as removing them and starting again.
At this point I would like to point to posaune's recommendation - 'work your muslin until it's dead!'
Is your collar pattern exact? The bottom edge of your piece is straight. Often the bottom edge of the collar is curved slightly, as in the diagram below. As it stands (pun observed) that could account for the excess cloth that distorts the collar as we see it now.
(https://i.postimg.cc/mPVZvmnB/Collar-Example.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/mPVZvmnB)
To paraphrase the late, great Edward Sexton, everything hangs from the shoulders. Get the hang right and the rest is detail in terms of fit. You might think that the back is a trivial thing, but your garment will look more elegant and fit better if you get it to hang properly there.
Looking at your photos again, your shoulders are pulling up the back further down too. Particularly on the LHS. The shoulder of the yoke probably needs to be shaped differently on both sides to compensate. The yoke would benefit from a dart too, as mentioned by peterle. As things stand, there's nothing to provide some shaping over the shoulders.
As for shortening the stand at the front, it may have looked too high, but did you try the shirt with a tie? There's a reason for that height.
PS re adding darts to the lower seam of the yoke. If there's little or no excess to pinch out at the sides there, then excess height needs to be added to the shoulder tips. This is then pinched out by the dart, so there's no net gain/loss.
Similar principle as when we're adding darts to a trouser pattern. We add cloth at the waist only to take it out again; the aim of the exercise being to create shape, rather than to pinch out excess cloth.
PPS Obviously making the shoulders squarer is going to add more circumference to the armhole. Therefore the sleeve may need recutting.
Looking at the pattern I See some flaws and too many straight lines.
As Schneiderfrei nentioned, the collar base line ist too straight. Thus ist my shirt collar:
(https://i.postimg.cc/YG9zj6Sc/IMG-20250530-103849.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/YG9zj6Sc)
the yoke seam also needs some shaping. This is my pattern( pronouced blades):
(https://i.postimg.cc/zbbH90Bf/IMG-20250530-104440.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/zbbH90Bf)
And I think you have to rework the neckhole.
Measure your neck circumference (NC) and follow the sketches:
(https://i.postimg.cc/HrtM56jJ/IMG-20250530-113811.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/HrtM56jJ)
(https://i.postimg.cc/WtJJSNhc/IMG-20250530-113717.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/WtJJSNhc)
Your shoulder seam will be placed differently because it is probably shifted forward. You should do this operation with front and yoke pattern joined at the shoulder seam to get the right overview.
This is all very helpful, thank you. Until now I hadn't really wrestled much with pattern corrections for shirts so there are some good ideas in here I need to ingrain.
The original casual shirt pattern that was the basis for this dress shirt was itself just a copy of an existing casual shirt (I copied it by tracing it with pins onto paper), and it worked well enough for the casual shirts I made from it. But, the dress shirt exercise has shown some flaws and I wonder if I should just start fresh with a new drawn-from-scratch pattern. That way I have solid reference lines and I can see all the steps to reach a point. I am tempted to fork out the money to purchase the Muller & Sohn men's shirt patterns because their trouser patterns worked so well for me, and all their drawings are to scale so it's easy to confirm calculations and readily see the modifications they make across styles. I also have the Don McCunn book which didn't serve me well in making trousers, but maybe his shirt pattern is better.
All in all this shirt is still fine for my purposes and I could probably tweak it for some improvements here and there but a nice fresh pattern is probably a better foundation for the long-term.
OK, I see.
Copying from a shirt is not that easy, because you can't see the details like darts ecc and it is easy to distort all the angles and curved lines. You need a plaid shirt to recognise all these details precisely.
A drafted pattern is surely easier to work with, because you have all the necessary lines.
Quote from: Schnquote author=Schneiderfrei link=msg=13630 date=1748558554]
Ok, thank you for that. You can't really do alterations for sway back in this case, since that sort of consideration needs to be done at the drafting stage.
It's sound logic to me to do a yoke on a muslin in order to avoid distortion in the cloth, although it does mean a bit of extra work. If the muslin cloth were stiffer, and you worked quickly and carefully, you wouldn't need to do that.
Before going on to the collar and stand, I am bothered by the ripples on the left front. Are they just a button placement problem? If not you will need to re-think the left front, because there are also ripples evident out at the scye/armhole. I would recommend starting by checking the button placement, even go as far as removing them and starting again.
At this point I would like to point to posaune's recommendation - 'work your muslin until it's dead!'
Is your collar pattern exact? The bottom edge of your piece is straight. Often the bottom edge of the collar is curved slightly, as in the diagram below. As it stands (pun observed) that could account for the excess cloth that distorts the collar as we see it now.
(https://i.postimg.cc/mPVZvmnB/Collar-Example.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/mPVZvmnB)
eiderfrei link=msg=13630 date=1748558554]
Ok, thank you for that. You can't really do alterations for sway back in this case, since that sort of consideration needs to be done at the drafting stage.
It's sound logic to me to do a yoke on a muslin in order to avoid distortion in the cloth, although it does mean a bit of extra work. If the muslin cloth were stiffer, and you worked quickly and carefully, you wouldn't need to do that.
Before going on to the collar and stand, I am bothered by the ripples on the left front. Are they just a button placement problem? If not you will need to re-think the left front, because there are also ripples evident out at the scye/armhole. I would recommend starting by checking the button placement, even go as far as removing them and starting again.
At this point I would like to point to posaune's recommendation - 'work your muslin until it's dead!'
Is your collar pattern exact? The bottom edge of your piece is straight. Often the bottom edge of the collar is curved slightly, as in the diagram below. As it stands (pun observed) that could account for the excess cloth that distorts the collar as we see it now.
(https://i.postimg.cc/mPVZvmnB/Collar-Example.jpg) (https://postimg.cc/mPVZvmnB)
[/quote]
The way I learned is to mirror collar stand and collar (to a point at 1/3rd of the front neck) vertically. The standard was dropping the collar band 7mm at centerback and raising the collar 7mm at centerback).
Shirts were worn more formal then I suppose...
Cheers, Hendrick
I agree with peterle. Although it would be a trivial matter to knock what you have into shape, you'll have a more accurate pattern (system permitting) if you learn to draft from scratch.
Quote from: EvanTA on May 30, 2025, 11:34:56 PMI also have the Don McCunn book which didn't serve me well in making trousers, but maybe his shirt pattern is better.
That's not a bad method because it's very intuitive and uses one's own measurements. The caveat is that McCunn's system for a basic top/sloper is quite fitted, whereas a shirt is going to be a looser fit.
His method for determining the shoulder angle and drawing the neck is all good. Just take measurements for both sides to combat asymmetry. However, with the torso it's better to think of it as a cylinder with ease added in the case of a shirt; then literally draw it as a (rectangular) block. This assumes a 'regular' build - which you have (your photos show that you're not carrying extra pounds). Curvature of the side seams, and addition of darts etc, can all be done later to add shape.
In the case of someone who is slim(ish) then often there is little difference between the chest and seat measurement. The larger of the two can be used for the torso's circumference measurement to create our block. We just add the appropriate amount of ease to that measurement for the desired outcome and use it at all points (chest, waist and seat). This is how shift-dresses are typically designed. But the same principle applies to shirts: 'straight-up-straight-down' over the body, add shape in a fitting.
As a rule of thumb, if someone has a slight build, or if a fitted look is required for an average build, then 4 inches of ease is added to the torso circumference. 6 inches gives a more relaxed feel (though not baggy) for most. 8 inches for a loose fit, or if someone is on the heavier side. Go with 6 inches of ease would be my advice.
The hems of dress shirts are taken down to the crotch line. Casual shirts down to the seat/top of the pubic bone. Follow the above guidelines and McCunn's system is as good as any other. Edit: though the sleeve stuff didn't do it for me: a short cap is required rather than a more fitted draft. Plus the armscye shaping is questionable: the 'cross chest' measurement above the apex line, from the middle of the arm joint to the CF, needs some ease. Likewise the cross shoulder measurement on the back. IIR, it's all exactly fitted in McCunn's book.