The Shirtmaking Workbook Pattern, Design, and Construction Resources David Page Coffin Copyright © 2015 Creative Publishing international Text © 2015 David Page Coffin Photography © 2015 David Page Coffin Illustration © 2015 David Page Coffin All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means— graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping of information on storage and retrieval systems—with- out the written permission of the publisher. Due to differing conditions, materials, and skill levels, the publisher and various manufacturers disclaim any liability for unsatisfactory results or injury due to improper use of tools, materials, or information in this publication. First published in the United States of America by Creative Publishing international, a division of Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.
400 First Avenue North Suite 400 Minneapolis, MN 55401 1-800-328-3895 www.com Visit www.net for a behind-the-scenes peek at our crafty world! ISBN: 978-1-58923-826-8 Digital edition published in 2015 eISBN: 978-1-62788-274-3 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Copy Editor: Karen Levy Proofreader: Julie Grady Cover and Book Design: Laura H. Couallier, Laura Herrmann Design Page Layout: Megan Jones Design Illustrations: David Page Coffin Photographs: David Page Coffin Cover Image: Glenn Scott Photography Photo Credits Pages 79-81: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Estate of H. Duke of Windsor and the Duchess of Windsor, 1986 (1986. Photographs by the author; published with permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Page 79: Photographs by the author; published with permission of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Printed in China Dedication To my brilliant and gentle father, David Page Coffin, who is maybe somewhere now at last understanding why the thing I most fondly recall from all the superb schools he sent me off to, long, long ago, was the fascinating clothes I got to see, and sometimes to wear.
Everything else I was supposed to learn there I’d already learned from him. Contents Introduction 6 CHAPTER 1 CHAPTER 2 CHAPTER 3 Block Logic 12 Skills and The Dress What is a Block? 13 Structures 32 (or Shaped) Shirt Block Categories 13 Sewing without Pins 34 Shirt Block 50 Where to Get Your Block(s) 14 Stitching Seams 36 The Dress Shirt 51 Blocks within Blocks 14 Turn a Better Point 38 Featured Garment: Vintage Fitting 18 Placket Origami 41 Arrow Evening Dress Shirt 52 Drafting 19 Convertible Collar Options 44 Featured Technique: Stand or Band Draping 56 Draping 20 Featured Designer: Morgan Meredith 46 Featured Details and Patterns: Copying a Shirt 22 Dress Collar Geometry 58 General Pattern Skills 24 Resources 48 Dress Collar Profiles: Tools 24 Equestrian Collars (64); Wing Collars (66); Digital Tools 26 Detachable Collars (68); Featured Designer: Roger Gray Men’s & Turnbull & Diane Ericson 28 Asser Women’s (70) Resources 30 Featured Designer: Anna Gorbatenko 74 Resources 76 CHAPTER 4 CHAPTER 5 CHAPTER 6 CHAPTER 7 The Sport/Work The Knit The Folk The Shirt-Jacket (or Loose-Fitting) (or Stretch Fabric) (or Rectangular) (or Over-Sized) Shirt Block 82 Shirt Block 122 Shirt Block 134 Block 148 The Sport Shirt 83 Featured Garment: Da Vinci Featured Garment: Swanndri Featured Garment: Pendleton Featured Garment: Cubavera Polyester Knit Combo 124 Wool Bush Shirt 136 Men’s 49er 150 Linen Guayabera 84 Featured Technique: Polo Collar Featured Garment: Smock Shop Featured Patterns: Convertible Featured Patterns: Camp or and Placket Options 126 Crew Neck Smock 138 Jacket Collars (154); Trench Convertible Collars (86); V-Neck Featured Technique: Quilting Featured Garment: Empire Collars (158) Convertible Collars (92); One- Fleece 128 Wool & Canvas Boreal Featured Garment: Filson Piece V-Neck Collars (94) Featured Technique: More Shirt 140 Double Mackinaw Featured Designer: Fleece Finishes 130 Featured Technique: Type-1 Cruiser 160 Michael Cepress 96 Resources 132 Placket Closures 142 Featured Patterns: Mackinaw Featured Patterns: Combination, Featured Designer: Collars (162); Shawl Collars or Italian, Collars (98); Kayla Kennington 144 (164) Combination Collar Shape Play Resources 146 Featured Technique: More (108) Layering Options 168 Featured Garment: Columbia Resources 170 Fishing/Sunblock Shirt 112 Featured Garment: Smith & Hawken Canvas Field Shirt 114 Featured Garment: Smith & Hawken Poplin Field Smock 116 About the Author 173 Featured Details: More Pocket Index 174 and Cuff Ideas 118 Resources 120 Introduction When I fi rst received the (somewhat staggering!) idea that I could possibly make some of my own clothes, my initial thought was, Just one pattern! “Well, I’ll only need one pattern for the shirt”. A fter all, it was clear even to a not-yet-maker that no way that impacted the fit, except when the sleeve lengths and matter the color, fabric, styles, or other specifics of necklines needed to be adapted to the intended wearer. any particular shirt, the shirts I already had were all fundamentally the same.
And it was perfectly obvi- ous that if I could learn to make one shirt, I’d be easily able to make What IS a Shirt? others with different collars and other details, even different ways Before we take another step, let me clarify what I’m regarding as a of fitting, not to mention different fabrics, without much or any shirt for the purposes of this project. Any garment that hangs from changing of the basic, core patterns or processes. the shoulders and has a neckline; has a mostly single-layer, mostly Forty years of home sewing, a handful of sewing books and DVDs, rectangular torso shaped, if at all, primarily by the shoulder and and a thirty-year career in the how-to-sew industry has only rein- side seams; has no internal structure, padding, or interfacing ex- forced the power and pertinence of this basic strategy, especially cept possibly in a collar or cuffs; and has sleeves that project from for this self-taught, nonprofessional garment-maker: learn how to the body at an angle, rather than fall parallel to it, counts as a shirt do one basic thing reasonably well and you can mine the varia- here. Garments that match this feature list tend to fit quite simply tions more or less endlessly.
My efforts to do just that with shirt- whether snug or very loose, and to have finished seams because like garments is what this book is all about, moving both myself there are typically no linings. An aura of utility and humbleness and hopefully you, too, from shirtmaking to shirt designing. colors the whole category, even if only as a memory of its simple beginnings; there aren’t many more ancient or universal strate- My first sewing book, Shirtmaking, lays out how any motivated gies for covering the upper human body. Exceptions, refinements, sewer can make dress shirts that reasonably approach top-quality add-on details, and mergings with other garment types are all custom-made garments.
In the process of preparing that book I’d welcome, because the point here isn’t to definitively declare started to become fascinated with how deeply useful it was, in what is or isn’t a shirt, but to open up the category to facilitate so many ways, to separate the aspects of a shirt—of any project, seeing connections we might otherwise miss, and to encourage really—that could or should remain the same from those that cross-fertilization. could or might be varied. In other words, to see the core behind the details. And by the time I’d seen the book in print, this had Most broadly, I’ll consider calling a shirt any garment that I can become by far the most interesting aspect of my whole shirtmak- make in essentially the same way as I would make what the world ing—indeed, any garment making—project: separating the core would universally regard as a shirt.
If I can make this (insert any from the details on a range of arguably shirt-type garments, and plain old shirt you’ve made), well, then I guess I can also make… exploring both core and details in depth, in order to expand our all these other things without learning any new stuff; and all THESE capacity to design and make shirt-like garments that are just what other things if I just learn THIS… etc. we happen to want at the time. I made an effort to demonstrate this bringing together of core and detail in my first book, filling its last chapter on design options Inspired by Clothes with examples of what I was currently doing with the dress-shirt When I decided to try to make a dress shirt, I simply wanted to skill set covered therein, which by then was anything but dress make one just like the favorite shirts I already had. What I lacked in shirts.
The garments at right, most made for inclusion in the sewing knowledge I made up for with an enthusiast’s appreciation first book, still make the point well, I think. Each of these was for shirts themselves, in detail. Beyond the fabrics and colors, I was developed directly from my personal dress-shirt basic pattern (a very conscious of, and critical about, two aspects of any shirt: The somewhat moving target over the years, but in essentials, just one SHAPES of the pieces that made it up, and the exact details of the pattern), and none of its core pattern shapes was altered in any WAYS those pieces were assembled. With some minor differences, 6 T H E SH I R T M A K I NG WOR K BO OK 1 2 3 4 5 6 These garments are Full-size printable patterns from these photo-profiled online garments, details, or muslins are online.
From one basic dress shirt pattern, six completely different designs; details available in online content. Each one was created simply by swapping in new details and redrawing free edges as desired. No changes affected the fit of the basic pattern, except for the neck- lines and sleeve lengths on 2 and 3, which were altered to accommodate a female’s proportions. From top left to bottom right: 1.
Pinpoint oxford dress shirt with neckband collar; this is my dress shirt pattern unaltered. Silk pullover blouse with applied self-fabric pleat panel and collar band ready for separate collars; shown in the Shirtmaking book. Linen pleated blouse with a one-piece bias-cut un-interfaced asymmetrical collar; shown on the cover of Shirtmaking. Cotton pullover shirt with piped applied panels of Japanese fabric and cowboy shirt cuff s, featured in Threads issue 67.
Wool twill pullover shirt with silk-lined sleeves and cotton-faced collar, bib, hem, and yoke; shown in Shirtmaking. Wool yoked jacket with machine-knitted cashmere sleeves and a fully lined and interlined body; shown in Shirtmaking. I N T RODUC T ION 7 all of my favorite shirts had very similar construction features, and I took these to be standard, essential to what made my shirts. So, What’s in This Book? But with my very first commercial shirt pattern (a Vogue Designer First, since there’s such a remarkably wide range of diverse manu- pattern) I was shocked to discover that while my new pattern had factured garments that share some basic, “core” features with the shapes I needed—or close enough—the ways it was showing what most would call “a shirt,” we’ll look at a bunch of these, both me for putting them together were clearly nothing like the ways for their similarities and for their unique features, to see what we MY shirts had been put together.
Yikes! can borrow and learn. Second, it’s easy to come up with a basic torso-fitting pattern for any arguably shirt-like garment, which is My purchased shirts were obviously manufactured, not home a simple rectangular body shape. And then it’s easy to develop sewn, but until this moment I hadn’t realized that these were such your own range of diverse garment projects by changing only the different worlds—and, I was to find out, by no means equally ac- selection and shape of the details, such as the fabrics, findings, cessible. From that simple but stunning recognition evolved my and finishes.