Custom Made Shirts

When our son visited us, he gave me his first custom made shirt which was like winning the lottery. There is much to be learned from this shirt in the area of shirt making. He also let me take pictures and trace two of his other shirts. These shirts fit him perfectly and the fabric is to die for.
Shirt #1 is either an Italian cotton or a linen cotton blend. It has a gorgeous hand even though it wrinkles. But the wrinkles aren’t ugly and they seem to smooth out while being worn. The feature of this shirt is the cuffs and collar band.
The cuffs have this dark brown piece added and they look so smart when the shirt is worn. I traced the cuff to get the exact measurements.

The collar band is solid coloured on the outside. When worn you just see it. The tailor also did the inside of the button bands with the plain fabric though you didn’t see them unless the top buttons were left open. I thought it was such a neat idea that added a different element to this shirt.

This tailor sews the buttons on using an X design with the thread.
Shirt #2 was bought in a shop in Toronto. It is a high end cotton that has a very subtle sheen to it.  This shirt is imported but the store still does alterations on them for clients. The unique feature of this shirt is the collar.

There is a second collar sewn to the under collar prior to it being sewn to the top collar and then to the collar band. The white stitching on this collar is sewn down to under collar after the button hole is sewn in.

When the collar is buttoned down, you don’t see the buttons on top of the collar. Very unique. The inside collar band and the yoke lining are made of the same fabric as the second collar piece. The second unique item of this shirt was the hem. The fronts and back were hemmed prior to sewing up the side seams. This allows the tailor to alter the shirt without taking out the hem. The buttons have the name of the company printed on them.
On both shirts, the sleeves were inserted using a flat felled seam that is 1/2 – 5/8” in depth. The side seams are very tiny flat felled seams. The hems are tiny also. I learned so much about expensive shirts and will be applying some of them to the shirts I make for the Spousal Unit.