Sewing Basics: Make Your Own Shirt from Scratch

1. Introduction: [MUSIC] Being able to create your garment is a skill that you would have for life. Just being able to conjure up something, put it into paper, into fabric, and then wear that. Honestly, I think that's just so cool. My name is Princillia, I'm in Nigerian women's wear designer based in the UK. My platform is called Kim Dave, where I create a sewing content online. I also share my journey of starting and growing my own brand. The struggles, the victories, the wins. Today we're going to be making a button up shirt with a two-piece stand collar, and a cuff on the sleeves. We'll start off with the measurements, the materials, the sewing patterns. With those patterns we are going to cut up a quick prototype to check for any errors, and then if you're okay with the phase of your prototype shirt, you can then go ahead and use your sewing patterns to make the final shirt. Towards the end we're going to be sharing how to add dots along the waistline to really add structure and definition to the garment. Making sewing patterns with your own measurement, is something that I think if you do, the shirt fits a lot better on, but you have the freedom to also download the patterns that comes with this class if you don't want to go through the hassle of making your own sewing patterns. This class is great for anyone who is looking to challenge themselves technically. You should be able to comfortably sew with a machine, I hope students walk away from this class feeling empowered with a skill that they can then use for themselves or apply to another project, the possibilities are endless. Let's get started. [MUSIC] 2. Preparing Your Project: I'm excited to teach this class because I don't think I've ever made a shirt on the Internet, so this will be my very first shared class. I'm also really excited to try out certain details like the sleeve placket which goes on the calf. This is a detail that has taken me a few months to perfect, so I'm hoping that someone will be able to watch this, to try it out for themselves, and have an outcome that you're proud of. The class has been broken down into a lesson. So these are bite-sized chunks that you can watch through at your own pace. Feel free to pause and take it at a pace that you are comfortable with so that we don't feel overwhelmed with the process. You can get all your materials ready and basically just sew along or watch it and use it as a guide to create your own shirt in your own free time. If you find that you don't quite understand something, you can go back and watch it again. You can take down notes of points that would help you when you're making your pattern, when you're cutting your garment, or when you're making your final shirt. Just know that it's normal to feel nervous, but don't let that stop you from actually trying this out. You'll be so proud of yourself if you follow through and actually create something even if it's not 100 on your first take. Let's jump right into it. I would say the first thing you need to figure out is the type of fabric you want to use because that affects the kind of patterns that you need to make. For today's class, I'm going to be working with this cotton print here. This has gorgeous combination of orange, blues, reds, and almost every other color under the sun. I would highly recommend curtain fabrics for someone who's a beginner and want a fabric that is easy to manipulate and to work with. However, if you're more advanced or you want a challenge, feel free to use any silks, any satins, any chiffons that you would like to use. Speaking of fabrics, I have this fabulous shirt on today, but I'm going to change into something easier to work in. [NOISE] That's so much better, let's get into the lesson. These are some materials that would come in handy in no particular order. I have a long metal ruler that would hold me draw my lines for my patterns. I also have my set square and pattern master here. I have some buttons and a fabric to create my shirt. Underneath that, I actually have something called an interfacing. This is an interesting fabric that has a bit of glue on one side to help you stiffen your collar, your cuffs, your plackets, and just give it more stability, so that I'm going to be using for my shirt today. I also have my measuring tape. These ones I'll be using to take my measurements. We're to work with mine so I highly recommend you work with yours for the absolute best fits. To take them and measurements I have a pen, a marker pen to draw down my pattern, and then I have my array of scissors, my fabric scissors, and my paper scissors. Please don't use your fabric scissors to cut paper. You're just going to damage that scissors and make it blunt. So I have one for each fabric and paper, and then I have a little scissors here to trim down any loose threads. Next to that, I have a tracing wheel to help me create my patterns, and then a calculator because I'm really bad at math. I'm going to leave a list of all the materials you would need for this project in the project resources. Let's move on to taking accurate measurements that you would need to create the shirt. [MUSIC] 3. Taking Your Measurements: I have my measuring tape here and I'm going to show you how to take the measurements that you'll be needing to make your own shirts. I'm going to start off from the shoulder, work my way down to the waist, the hip, and then the measurements you'll be needing for your sleeve as well. I have a measuring tape that has two different units. There is inches on one side and centimeters on the other side, so you can work with whichever you're comfortable with. The first measurements I'm going to take is across the shoulder. This goes from one shoulder to the next and you want to try and feel for a bone that sits right on that edge on both sides there. The next is around your busts. You would need to wrap the tape around the fullest part of your busts. While you take your measurements, try and add a little bit of what I call ease, this would allow you to actually breathe in the garment. I'd like to add just one finger underneath the tape to ensure that I can breathe in and out, if I decide to work with these measurements the way they are. Below that is the waistline. This is different for different people, some people have their waist higher, some have theirs lower. Try and feel for the most slender parts of your body. Mine is above my belly button, some people have theirs along their belly button. I'm just going to feel for mine, mine is around here. Going to tape around a little bit to be sure that it's nice and comfy, one finger test, take note of that measurement. Let's move onto vesicle measurements. With my tape, I'm going to measure from my shoulder to my bustline, so try and feel for that bone I mentioned earlier on. Down to your bustline, this would be your shoulder to bust. This varies from person to person, mine sits around 10 inches, some people have theirs at eight. I'm going to take note of that and use in my pattern later on. Next up, you need to measure from your bustline to your waistline. If you can keep the tape on your bust and then feel for where your natural waistline is, and then take note of that measurement as well. Some people have long torso, some have shorter torso. Mine is really short because I'm a small girl, so just work with the measurement that suits your body type. Then from the waist to the hip, hold that tape where your waistline is, and then find your hip-line, which would be the fullest part of your hip. That is around this area, and then take note that dimension as well. Now, for the land of the shirt, I'm going to measure from my shoulder all the way to the point that I want my shirt to stop. I want mine to be around my hip, so I can wear it open with leggings or shorts in the summer. I think mine might sit around 26, 25 inches, somewhere around here. You can have yours longer or shorter if you want, the choice is yours. Just work with the length that you're comfortable with. The next measurement I'm going to be taking is what I call the nipple to nipple measurements, is just self-explanatory. I'm going to measure from one bust to the other. This is going to help me plan my dots, so it falls underneath my bust in such way that is flattering on my body. It's going to go from this point, basically the fullest part of my bust on one and then to the other. Mine sits around six or 6.5 inches, if I really wanted to be on point, that is the dimension here. Now for the sleeve of the shirts, I want something that is a full length sleeve. I'm going to be measuring from, thanks, I already have a shirt on, this is really going to guide me. I'm going to measure from my sleeve head here down to around my wrist. This shirt is going to have a croft, so that's going to be added measurements, keep that in mind when you are measuring the length of your sleeve. Mine, I think I would work with 19 inches, so I can add a coft that is above four or five inches, so it goes all the way down to the end of my wrists. For the cuff, four inches is good, because the one I have on here is about 4.5. If you want something really wide like what I have on here, this is 4.5, I think I'll do four, so it's in a little bit narrow around the arm. You'd also need to measure around your wrist, so you have an idea of how the cuff is going to fit. You want to have, I will say an extra inch measurement so it wraps around and then you have space for your buttons to actually sit along the side of your cuff. I have eight inches here, but I'm going to add an additional inch to make it nine. I have enough measurements to stitch into the bottom of my sleeve and then have room for my buttons and my button holes to stand well. Now for the sleeve dimension itself, so that's around your bicep to your elbow, and then the hands. This, I'm going to measure with my arms bend up. When I have the shirt on, it's actually comfortable and it doesn't rip when I'm using it or when I'm hugging someone. Do my one finger role to ensure that it's comfortable. This is about 12.5, then I'm going to measure around my elbow next to the [inaudible] movement there. I have 12 inches on here. Then I'm going to measure around the bottom of the sleeve. I have about 10 inches here, like so. I will say when taking measurements, if you have a mirror, especially if you're taking measurements on yourself, if you have a mirror in front of you, that would be very helpful to ensure that the tape is actually straight across your body. When you're taking measurements around your bust, your waist, or your hip, you are sure that everything is actually correct. Then write down your measurements as you take them. Some people believe that they can remember everything, but just write it down so that way, you don't mix up numbers together and you actually are working with the correct measurements for the different parts of the garment. Now that we have all of our measurements, let's move on to make the sewing patterns. [MUSIC] 4. Patternmaking: Front Bodice: Now that we have all our measurements in place, let's get into making the sewing patterns. I have my measurements written here next to me, and I'm just going to be looking at that and then working on the pattern. I have my long metal ruler. This is about a meter long. With this I'm going to draw a long vertical line that's going to become my center front line, and then plan the pattern in this direction. Just going here and draw that. I'm going to mark my vertical dimensions next, the vertical itself from the shoulder to the bust, and then the one from the bust to the waist, so on and so forth. We need to mark that along this line and then square those points across. What that means is I just need to draw horizontal lines that perpendicular to the vertical one. That guides me to mark my waist measurement, my hip measurements, and so on. Now I'm going to use a set square, this allows me to align this middle line to the vertical one, and allows me to draw horizontal lines that will be straight. I don't trust myself to draw lines that'll be straight free hand like that so we want everything to come out nice and tidy. Now let's come to the shoulder line which was this edge, the first one that I marked. Then I'm going to mark half of my across the shoulder. That measurement is going to ensure that the edge of your shirt falls in the part of your body that you want and it's comfortable for you. I believe mine is 16. I'm going to divide that by two. That gives me eight. Then my shoulder width, which is the distance from the very edge of the shirt to wear my collar is going to sit. I like to work with four inches, it's like a nice width that is not too wide and is comfortable around my shoulder. That I'm going to mark inwards in this direction because that is where we're going to plan the neckline of the shirt. We do over here. Then to ensure that the shoulder falls like in a natural form because our bodies are not straight that way. They slant down a little bit. I'm going to come to this edge and mark 0.75 inches, is roughly an inch but I like 0.75 because I found that to be in my main width for that. Next up on the neckline for the front, I'm going to mark how deep the neckline is going to drop, which essentially means that from that point onwards, we will now add the two-piece collar that a typical shirt would have. I feel 3.5 inches is a good depth. It's a little bit high, so the collar is high on your body, and it gives room for the collar to sit really nicely. That I'm going to connect as a round neckline from here to there. I'm obsessed with this tool. It's called the pattern master. It has this curved edge. After drawing in the neck line for the front of the shirt. I'm going to go into work on the bust, the waist and the hemline of the shirt. This is my shirt hemline because I mark the vertical distance from there all the way down to the bottom, starting from the bust, which is this one here. I will be dividing my bust measurement by four and adding about half an inch. You can go up to an inch if you really want a really comfy loose fit. So, if I divide my bust, which is like roughly 36 by four, that gives me nine. Just add half inch to that because I'm still going to add what I call the seam allowance around the pattern that allows me to actually join panels together. Now along the waistline because I want the shirt to be really relaxed and comfortable. Then later on we can go into our dots for more structure and definition. I'm essentially just going to have the side seam be straight. From the bust all the way down to the hem. This is the point that if your hip is a little bit wider and you want it to feel more comfortable there, whatever your hip dimension is, divide that by four, add your half an inch ease, and then square that upwards. That way the shirt sits nice and comfy around your hips, it might be a bit loose around your bust if you have a smaller chest, but that way you really get a nice comfy style and a relaxed fit. My hip measurement is 39, going to divide that by four, that gives me a 9.75. Just round that up to 10. Remember, you need to draw a line that goes all the way up back to my bust line. Let's go ahead and draw the curves. This is a line that typically slopes down inwards like this. It sits comfortable around your bust. This would connect from this point to this point. With my beloved pattern master, I going to to go in again to draw that here. You can do this in two takes. If you find that your tool doesn't allow you to do it in one clean swoop. You can also use a French curve for lines like this, like around the arm, around the neck line around the hips, curved parts of the body. The French curve works just as well. Now we have the basic front of a shirt done. I want to plan in the waist data at this point, even though I know I won't use it straight away, I just want to have it in the pattern, so when it's time for me to actually add it to the shirt, I have something to guide me. Now, the waist that I want to see like half of my nipple to nipple measurements. Whatever that nipple to nipple measurement is, I'm going to divide that by two and then mark the dot away along those points. Mine was 6.5, so I'm going to divide that by two. That gives me 3.25. Let's find that here along the waistline. Then I want a waist dot that is one inch total. You still have some ease in there, but you're able to take away some of the excess on the waistline to the dot. Grid up, and down. Now when you draw dots upwards, be careful not to go into your bust points because you would lose measurements there. I'm going to mark one inch below the bust point, which is this point there. Then this top dot is going to connect from here to here, there to there. Then it's going to go downwards in this direction. I would make the bottom of my dots to be about five inches long, that is roughly 13 cm. If you're using a thick pen like I am, you could not put the edge of your ruler against the points. Just move it away slightly because that gives the edge of your pen some room to actually go from one point to the other, accurately. We have the plan of the front done, is now time to add the extension or what I call a placket. This is basically the extra bit of material that your buttons are actually going to sit on, because if you cut and stitch this shirt like this, there is nothing for your buttons to go on. I like to have mine at about two centimeters which is roughly an inch or three centimeters, depending on the size of your buttons. If you have big buttons, you definitely want to have your bottom stands a lot wider to accommodate your buttons. The ruler already comes with the units marked, so I just need to align this with this center front line. This I'm going to extend. Then I'm going to extend it again. I have two, three centimeter dimensions that I can fold against each other and stitch to have the button stand on the front of the shirt. If you don't want to do it like this, you can actually make this as a separate pattern piece. I'd like to just do it this way because I know once I have the front of my shirt done. I have the bottom stand in there as well. If you just want a nice clean front, you can basically just draw on another piece of paper. That's fine as well. Here connect all of these points together till we make hemline. I'm also going to extend the neckline. Just has to be straight from this point all the way to the edge. Then I'm going to add a notch right right the middle of this front neckline, because when you add your collar, this is a point that is going to make your life so much easier because it tells you that this point is meant to connect to the other points on the collar piece. This is typically just a short line, that just gives you information when you are making the collar. I think that is everything for the front. I'm just going to quickly add seam allowance around and then use it as a guide to make my back. I'm going to use a different color of 10, so it's visible. Least be adding two centimeters hem allowance along the bottom, because I plan to do a rolled hem because it's essentially just roll it twice and then you stitch. I'm going to do one centimeter on the side [MUSIC] Front shirt pattern is done, please don't forget to add your green line. The green line is what will guide you when you are coating onto your fabric, you should always align your green line to the selvage of your fabric, which is essentially the edge of your fabric. When you coat your garment along the green, it just folds more naturally because that's how the fabric is woven. If you coat it against the green, it might warp or shift in very odd manner, except if you want to buy as cut garment, which is essentially when you cut it 45 degrees off the grain, then it just drapes in a very flowy manner. It has a bit of stretch along that as well. I'm just going to go in here and write what this pattern is, so if I give this to someone else, they know what it is. This is my front shirt. I would need to cut two of this. This is a side 10 UK because that's what I am. It's made in 2023 and my name is Kim Dave. [MUSIC] 5. Patternmaking: Back Bodice: Let's just go in here to layer down some more paper. This is one of the reasons why I love this particular paper because it's transparent, you can see things underneath. This kinds of paper are architects actually use. Now the back is pretty similar to the front. The side scene is the same on the back because your front and your back have to match along the side so you're able to join them correctly. The hem is going to be the same, the shoulder will be the same, but the back is going to be caught on the fold. So essentially it's just going to be this long vesicle line here. The center front line is going to become my center back line and when I put that folded edge along the folded part of the fabric and cut it, I have a whole piece from my back. I'm just going to trace this all. These are the following changes I'm going to be making for the back shirt pattern. The back neck line, rather than having it 3.5 for the front, it is going to be 2 inches because the back of the shirt is a little higher compared to the front. Along this edge like so, I'll just be making 2 inches here. Then connect that back to this edge. It's important that it goes back here because you want your front and your back to actually match along the shoulder. Then the arm curve for the back is not as deep as the front. The back one is a bit [NOISE] shallow. This edge and that edge still has to be the same. But this point here is just a little bit shallow, I see by about a centimeter, [NOISE] give or take. I'm going to to add notches at this point for my own curves. The back curves one, it has [inaudible]. I'm also going to draw in the dots for the back as well. To do that, I'm going to need my waistline and my bossline. Now the back can go all the way up to the boss line because that's on the back and we don't have ***** at the back. This one can be the same as it is for the front. [MUSIC] You can click this out. [NOISE] I'm going to curve down these patterns because they are going to guide me to make the collar and the sleeve and so I'm going to be working on next. [MUSIC] 6. Patternmaking: Collar: We have the front and the back of the shirt done and I'm going to be using or working with the neck line that we have drawn from the front and the back to create the collar piece. This is going to be a two-piece collar, which means that it's going to have two different panels that we're joining together to make the collar of the shirt. Starting with the front, I have a piece of paper here and I'm going to try to fit the first part of this collar piece. Now from neckline, I'm going to trace off the stitch line, which is the first one we drew before we added the seam allowance. We have to trace off this line like so, transfer the notch as well and then extend it upwards so that helps me to create the stand collar, which is the bottom piece, that this shirt design has. This should go up here. Now this particular point, this is the center front. This is going to be a fold line. This is going to be folded against this one. In theory, this edge is going to be the edge of the shirt that actually overlaps so this particular piece here, once it's all folded and stitch down, this is the extension that the front of the shirt is going to have. This collar pieces first one is going to start from this edge and then we're going to extend it upwards by how long the back neck line is. From this point upwards, I'm going to be extending it by 5.5. The transform notch as well. Now my stand collar width is going to be 3 centimeters or roughly 1 inch plus a bit. That's I want to be straight along this edge so three centimeters birth in this direction. 3 centimeters here. Just mark that across and then connect it together to give you the top edge. For this side of the collar I want to round it off a bit for me to really nice shape when that front edge is lightly more rounded rather than having it at a point. I'm going to again add seam allowance around this because without the seam allowance, you actually cannot join panels together. They've had to add a bit of paper there just to accommodate to the bottom of my collar piece. But I'm going to cut this out and this is going to guide me to make the actual collar that you see on the shirt. Then just write down some annotations on this, because I just wrote on this **** collar. I need to cut two pairs fused. What fuse actually means is you need to iron interfacing on the wrong side of the fabric so that way it gives the fabric some weight and somebody to hold the shape of the collar. You need a pair for each side of your shirt and then the actual collar piece itself needs to be fused same as your cuff. I'm just going to this out along the seamless edge, which is the green line. Lets not forget the green line. The green is important. The center back edge is going to guide me to where [inaudible]. Now from the times I've made shirts with the stand collar just like this, I found that this top edge comes out a little bit too tight. This will come up here. This was that notch point that we made on the center front edge and I'm going to draw this line upwards and actually smash and spread this line open by about an inch. This I'm going to cut from the top edge, because that's the top end of your neck and to cut this down as close as possible to the edge of the pattern. Then I'm just going to knit a piece of paper , lay that underneath. Then we are going to spread it on this curved edge, by about 1 inch. Tape this down in place. Once that is all intact we definitely need to connect these points as well as the bottom because the bottom has a little weird dip there, we don't want that. [MUSIC] That's the first bit of the collar done. Next time you go shopping for a shirt, you would appreciate shirts more because of the amount of work that actually goes into making one. Okay, now that we have this one done, I'm going to use this as a guide to meet the other side of the collar. Now for this second piece or this top collar, this would be the same curve along this bottom edge, but it would be mirrored, rather than have it as this one is like this, after we trace out this curve I would actually turn the pattern paper the other way, I'm drawing the actual shape of the collar itself. This is going to trace off along the stitch line, which is the black line. The collar sheet itself is going to be upwards like this and like that and I feel like I want mine to be 3 inches let's do three. That I would mark here, right at the shoulder point. That's the guide. Then I'm going to come to the front and draw a line at those points outwards and little bit like this. There we have 3 inch marked here. This one should be straight because this is a four [inaudible] edge. This particular side, just happens to be the center of ark and I'm going to draw a line that cuts from this end to this end, and now I'm going to add my seam allowance and I'm done with collar pieces. [MUSIC] 7. Patternmaking: Sleeves and Cuffs: The next pattern I'm going to be working on is the sleeve, and I know sleeves can be scary to make from scratch. I'm actually going to be showing a very like my own way of making sleeves that is very simple, very straightforward, and would work with whatever garments that you make the sleeves from. You would need the front arm curve on your back arm curve. Those you would need to trace off or not onto another piece of paper and then mark however long you want your sleeve to be and all the other measurements that typically go on a sleeve pattern. Now, this piece of paper, I'm going to fold in half. From this folded edge I'm going to move it toward the front arm curve, that's what am starting with. You need to move it closer to the edge, this edge here, and then with my measurements in mind, am measuring around my biceps, elbow, wrist and so on. My around bicep was 13 inches, so that divided by two will be I think 6.5. Yes 6.5, and I want to try to make this folded edge be 6.5 inches, so from here to this edge should be 6.5 inches. Whatever yours is, whatever your own bicep is, divide that by two and then try and move the edge of the paper to be 6.5 inches from this point, which is your stitch pointers, your stitch line, point there. The other way around. I'll trace off the front on the curve and we'll trace off this points with such pointing down to here, and then I'm going to add a notch for my front, so I know that this side of my sleeves to go fronts and then I put that on the actual front itself. Then I'm going to open up this pattern. I repeat the same thing for the back, it does straighten off the back as well. The back does not have the stitch line in there but I know it's roughly about this distance from the edge of the pattern. The next thing I'm going to do is connect these dash lines together, but only to the point where the notch is in both sides. Then I'm going to turn my pattern master in this direction, and draw the actual sleeve head in, well to ensure that this line and this line are the same because we need to measure it quickly. My sleeve length is going to be 19 inches. Then I'm going to make a cuff afterwards to ensure that it's up the full sleeve on me. Along the sleeve hem I'm going to mark the sleeve hem width, which is basically this bottom part that is going to sit in the cuffed. I am going to be marking mine as 10 inches. It's fine if it's a little bit wider than the width of your cuff because then you can pleat it into your cuff to make a really nice detail. You can have yours exactly the same. You can even have it a little bit wider and then gather it into the cuff like I have with this style of blouse on today. This I'm going to connect from here to here and there to there. I have my sleeve pattern done [MUSIC] Now you would want to add your placket closer to the back of your sleeves, so when you have the shirt on, it sits behind you or not essentially in the front, so it wraps around in a really nice way. Some ways to come towards the back, which is where you have the two notches here, then mark the vertical line for the plackets. I will see you can sit anywhere between 2-3 inches away from the back of this side of the sleeve, there should be a sweet spot. Then I want it to be can be four or five inches tall. You don't want it too tall though. It shouldn't go all the way to your elbow. Then I'm going to just add the edge. Now on both sides of this line that we've just drawn, I'm going to draw in the stitch line, use a different color of pattern so it's easier to distinguish from the other. This is half a centimeter away that's how wide we're going to be stitch from this edge, and then it's going to be a centimeter taller. Going to do this on both sides. Now from this edge in this direction, I'm going to mark 2.5 inches twice. Just draw in like that, and then draw it again 2.5 centimeters is roughly one inch. Do this again. Then on this side, two centimeters. On this end, this side am going to be extending upwards in this direction by about 2.5 centimeters over one inch. This will all make sense when we start sewing, I promise. Chill, now that this is all planned out, I am going to go in to just add lines around the edges so the bottom one is already there, just need to add one for the side. This is my new sleeve clear-cut. Need to cut two of these. This is 23 and Kim Dave. Thankfully because these lines are all vertical. I could honestly just go in here and make one of them migraine mine, so don't draw a little line. The last piece I think I'll be able to actually draw in at the bottom here because that looks like it will be wide. This is going to be the cuff that sits on the bottom of the sleeves. I want my cuff to be three inches wide. It's going to measure three inches from this end, and we add the missing lines as well, make that 3.5, I want my cloth to be nine inches wide [MUSIC] 8. Testing Your Prototype: I have all of the patterns done and laid out in front of me. These took a couple of hours to make but it is totally worth it, I promise you. It takes away the guess game of making a garment because you've made a template that you can use to make your shirt. I'd also recommend making a prototype if you're trying this out for the first time. In order not to just make any expensive mistakes, you can make even if half of the shirt, try it on, see if you like the length, you like fit on you. At that point, you can go back to your pattern and make any changes. If you wanted to change up the style of the sleeve or the depth of the neckline, that's the point where you can make those changes. If you feel you're confident and you're sure that you can make your shirt straight away, you can skip prototyping. I've made one myself just to show you what the finished shirt might look like and it gives you a better idea of what the project would be like at the end. If making the pattern is overwhelming for you and it's just giving you too much headache, there is going to be a PDF pattern that you can download in the project resources. You can just download it, print it out at home, assemble it, and you use that pattern to make your shirt so that way you don't have to go through the hustle of making the patterns from scratch. If you're going to be downloading the patterns for yourself, I would really recommend double-checking on measurements with whatever size you want to go with. That way you choose a size that fits you and it's comfortable to your liking. Just double-check the bust, the waist, the hip, the length of the sleeve, and you could even go for a size bigger or smaller if you wanted a fit that was a little bit different from the original design that we have here today. But just make the whole process a lot easier for you. I've made a prototype using the patterns that I've made today and I'm going to try it on to show you what the fit of this shirt looks like. This is what the prototype looks like all done. I have made this in simple color code which is a natural cotton. This is a similar weight and weave to my final fabric. I haven't added any buttons or button holes because it's a sample but it fits nicely around the bust. I'm happy with the fit around the waist and the hip. I would say, be mindful of the fit around your arms. You want it to be nice and comfortable. This one isn't too bad but if you would like to make your sleeves a little bit nice and roomy, be mindful of that when you're taking your measurements. I made a very clever mistake when I was doing my sleeve placket and I will show you the right way and the wrong way to do this. Now, the right way is like this is meant to wrap like that to the back and have the buttons done. The wrong way is it has gone the other way around and it's like this. Now to everyday people it doesn't really matter, you can't really tell that is wrong but the problem with that is when you have the shirt on the bottom just look a bit weird compared to how it really goes from front to back on this side. When you're stitching your placket on to your sleeve, just be aware of that. It's a little bit tricky but just be aware that this is the wrong way and that is the right way for it to be done. This is the finished shirt; front view and the back as well. Loving it so far. If you want to make changes to the size of your collar, you can do that as well. You can even go for a wider collar if you wanted it really dramatic or something even thinner. I like this one because it's a really nice width. The width sits around the neckline. There is going to be a button that sits here like this on this first part there and then there are going to be buttons down the front. We would aim to have odd number of buttons, five, seven, or nine depending on the size of your buttons and then I would aim to have either three or six on my cuff depending on the size of my button as well. Besides that everything is coming together really nicely. I'm excited to make this shirt. Now that we have the pattern and the prototype sorted, let's move on to creating the base of the actual shirt. [MUSIC] 9. Sewing: Base: I have changed from prototype into this gorgeous piece I have on here. I mean, it's a design class, you might as well. I have cut out all of my pieces, I've made them on the table. The pattern came in handy cut in this pieces, so don't forget to cut your pattern on your fabric along the green line. What that essentially means is you want to align the green line, which is that vertical line we drew, to the salvage of your fabric, so the woven edges of your fabric, that way you cut everything in the same direction and it just falls naturally on the body. I have my front pieces, my back, and I have also gone into fuse my color pieces, my cuff, as well as the bids for my placket. I'll show you what that looks like real quick. This is one of them. The interfacing I used is net white woven one. You want to use a woven interface because you can get any types you want as well. This one was like a really nice lightweight, so it's not too thick and heavy because it's two pairs, which means is going to be double on one side and double on the other side, is not going to be like very stiff around the collar but to hold the shape really well. I did that for the stand collar, trust me, to make both sides different fabrics, I like collar like that. I also did for the main color piece that goes on top. I did this for the placket which is going to go in the cuff and into the sleeve as well. Then I did it for the cuffs, these ones. This is going to the bottom of the sleeve of the shirt. Those pieces, I fused. Another side of the shirt that I actually fuse and I think is very important is where the buttons and the button holes are going to be. Let me open it up and show you. From the edge to the point where I added the extension on the front, that's where the buttons are going to be. I have folded it twice like this and like that. Those were the seam allowances are added at the edge. Then I folded it in one more time like that, and that would conceal and hind the fusing completely on the front of the shirt. If you made this as a separate piece, you can go in and stitch it along this edge, but because this is one continuous piece that goes from the front, once you've folded in this way, you have a beautifully finished button stand on both sides of your shirt. I did it for this side and this side as well, so I know my front is ready to be joined to the back of my shirt. Quick mention is, what's the green line is like on this pieces, so this is just one side of the front. I'm very thankful that this fabric actually has like some visible threads there you can see, so the grain is essentially this direction of the fabric, so the long vertical thread. If you buy this entire fabric as a role, you can essentially just pull a thread that will go from the beginning to the end and that is like the grain of your material. The selvage was along this edge and I placed my pattern and aligned the grain of the fabric to the selvage of the entire fabric roll. You would want to do this for all of your pieces, your front, your back, even the smaller bits as well because that way when everything is stitch together, they fall in the same direction on the body. With that out of the way, let's actually join these pieces together. I promise sewing goes by a lot quicker than making the patterns. I find that once you have the patterns out of the way, you have the pieces cut, you essentially just need to assemble them like Lego. I have my back piece here, which have cut on a fault and I'm going to be joining it to the run along the shoulder and along the side. It's an almost straight stitch. I'm going to go in and stitch up the sides here, as well as the shoulder. I'm going to be sewing on a one centimeter seam allowance because that's what I added to my pattern. Whatever seam allowance you add to your pattern, that's what you will stitch away from the side and from the shoulder of this shirt. If you have notched your pieces according to where they were on your pattern, this is a point where it will come in really handy. I'm going to find the waist notch for the front and match that to the waist notch for the back. With right side facing each other, I'm just going in here to pin my fabric along this shoulder edge. Adding pin, just ensure that nothing moves around like crazy when you move your pieces to the machine to sew. If you are someone who is more experienced and you are more comfortable, just say, figuring things out, you might not need to add the pin, but they just make the whole process a lot easier. [MUSIC] Quick tip to secure your stitch on the sewing machine is most machines come with a reverse button or reverse stitch. If you place your finger on that, it takes your stitch back and it locks the seam, so it doesn't unravel when you wear it or when you pull out that seam. This one is computerized and I'm going to put my hand on the button and it's going to take it back and work the magic for me, and then if I let go, it sews back down again. You have to secure everything nice and tidy. When it comes to pin placement, it's very helpful to pin edges that are like this with a pin going from this direction to that direction, so as you sew, you can easily pull it out and then it doesn't get in the way of your machine needle. If you pin it like this, which is fine, what might happen is your machine needle might actually catch the sharp edge of your pin. Just having it like this just makes it easy peasy. Just pull it out as you sew. Try not to think too much about it. This I have done on the shoulder and along the side seam as well. I just added three pins, one at the beginning, the end, and in the middle along that waistline to just hold that part intact. [MUSIC] I'm all done stitching up the shoulder seams for my shirt. If you don't have an overlocker, a quick thing you can do is just use these exact stitch along the seam allowance that will just prevent this edge or from unraveling with time. I'm going to use my overlocker here because we have one in the studio that I can work with. I'm going to go into stitch up the sides seams and then overlock the side seams and the shoulder seams as well, before coming back to work on this center for edge where my buttons and my button holes are going to stand. Now what they overlocker does, is it weaves the edge of the fabric, and this one has a blade at the edge that trims it as well, so you have trimming and weaving happening, so it's not just a raw edge like this, but you have a nicely beat off the edge like this one. Nice and tidy. I've worked with black, so it goes with the main color of this fabric. Just secure the end makes it look nice and good on the inside, I'm going to overlock the other edges. [MUSIC] This next part is, I won't say it's hard. I know say you need a bit of practice to get it right. We're going to be doing a very narrow edge stitch to join this folded edge of this side here to the main shirt itself. This is going to lock down that fold and is going to show on the right side of your shirt, so just take your time doing it. If it's not straight, you can go back and redo it again because it's going to be visible right on the front of your shirt. Hence why I meant it takes a bit of practice. I hope mine comes out nice. [MUSIC] This came out really cool. This is what it looks like at the front and this is what it looks like behind. Essentially just repeat the same thing on the other side. [MUSIC] I'm going to hem the edges of the shirt. While I'm here, I might as well do that because that is basically going to be a rolled hem. What are a rolled hem is is you roll it once and you roll it twice and you stitch across all the way around. You can overlock the edge and then just roll it once. If you don't want to do it twice like I'm doing here, I just want to have it twice because it would make a thicker seam, and that way you just like falls nicely on the bottom. I'm not going to trust myself that I will roll this evenly across, so I'm going to put some pins. I will roll this and then pin it down. You could also give this a nice press just to secure that fold. Once you take it to the machine and start sewing, everything is already like folded away nicely for you. Your side seams, you would want to point towards the back like this. For that, again, just put a pin there. I'm rolling by one centimeter twice because I added two centimeter hem allowance to my shirt patterns, so I'm essentially just folding, rolling and I'm going to stitch that away along the bottom of the shirt. I have rolled and pin the hem line of the shirt, so this is ready to stitch. I'm just going to take this machine and I'm going to be stitching along this edge and doing a similar stitch with what I did for the front very close to the edge, so that's secures the hem line and just finishes off the bottom of the shirt really nicely. [MUSIC] Hem line is all done. I'm going to give this a press, so I'm going to iron hem line the center front edges, the side seam as well, just to relax all of the stitching. It just makes the garment look a lot nicer. I'm the person that as I stitch, I iron. People like to iron at the end. I just find that seams look a lot nicer once they've been pressed with some steam or like a normal iron, just make the garment look so much tidier as well. The base of the shirt is all done. Next up, we're going to move on to the collar. [MUSIC] 10. Sewing: Collar: Now that we're all done with creating the base of the shirt, we can move on to working on the collar. I have all of my pieces here I'm going to be needing. For the top collar, I have a pair. I've decided to cut one side in the prints and the other side in a plane orange fabric just for contrast. You can use the same fabric for both, it's just a personal preference of mine. For the stand collar, I have two pairs. One pair here, both of them have fused with interfacing on the wrong side of the fabric. This plain orange, I have repeated the same thing essentially. Now, here I'm adding structure and stability to the collar of the shirt, so when everything is stitched together, it stands really nicely along the neck. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm actually going to work on the bottom collar first. These pairs. I am going to be joining up the center-back edge. I'm going to put right sides together like so, so I can match those edges, then I'm going to just put a pin there so I can work on the other one. Putting right side together of the collar pieces. With right sides facing each other, I'm going to go in to stitch off the center-back edge for both sets of my top collar before working on this one here. This, I'm sewing only one-centimeter seam allowance because that's how much was in my sewing pattern. Some edges you're just going to stitch that way. I'm going to set this aside and work on the top collar piece. For this one, I'm going to put right sides together first because you want to join the top edges before connecting it to the bottom collar. Let me just match those edges nicely. I'm going to reach for my pattern piece. Always double-check that I have all of the notches transferred on here. The plan is you would need to sew from this edge, there is a corner here, around this side, up, straight along this edge, and down to the other corner. This corner was essentially the point where this one is going to match up with this one like this. This edge would be the point of the collar on the shirt that you see. This would have to be stitched up first before joined to this one. I'm just going to grab my little scissors and just notch this quickly. I know that's the beginning of my stitch. I'll repeat the same thing for the other side. I'm going to go in to stitch along the straight edge of the top collar, turn this inside-out and give it a nice press along with these edges for the stand collars as well. [MUSIC] I'm just going in here to iron the seam I made on the center-back edge for the stand collar. It's nice and flat like this. This is one side. I'm going to repeat the same thing for the second side. I'm just turning my main collar inside out and I'm going to use edge of my small scissors just to poke out the ends, so we have a nice point there. It helps to trim off the extra fabric that goes around the corner before you do this. Because that just reduces the amount of bulk that you are trying to push through this corner here. If that reaches the end, I'm going to actually press the seam open, and then press the entire collar piece down, flat. Ones it's pressed down like this, you really start to see the beauty of the collar come to life, like all of the puffiness, the tension from the stitching, everything is a lot more relaxed. This open end is what we're going to be sandwiching into this stand collar or the bottom collar that the shirt has. Now that I'm done ironing all of the pieces I need for the collar, I'm just going to join them all together. I'm going to grab this piece and match this collar of the fabric to this edge. I want to match the center-back points of the top collar to the bottom one. Then I'm going to take the other piece and go over it like that. This part is a little bit tricky, and I'll show you why. This edge here is relatively straight, so that's straightforward to sew. But this curved end, you basically have to pull it down to this end and stitch it in place. I'm going to go and add some pins because that would make the process a lot easier for me. I'm coming in here, add a pin to this side. Let me open up this edge so you see what I'm doing. Then I'm going to pull this down like this. Basically, we're trying to join two curved ends together. I think that's where the tricky bit is, because they both have a mind of their own, so you try to actually manipulate and ease them into each other. This is the point where if you put those notches, the one that sits right in the middle of your front neck line, the one from here should connect to the one on top there. Just going to put another pin here. Now that this side has been pinned in place, I'm going to take the other side and wrap it in. This is what I mean by sandwiching. You are literally trapping this collar between these two pieces, this side and this side as well. Everything I've done on this end, I'm going to repeat on this side. Once I've pinned everything together in place, I'm essentially going to set it to my machine and I'm going to sew it off with one continuous stitch from the beginning to the end. We have one piece that join together as the collar of the shirt. [MUSIC] I'm going to take this to my machine and I'm going to be sewing only one centimeter seam allowance, I'm going to be sewing around this edge down across the back, onto the other side of the front to connect both pieces together. [MUSIC] I'm done stitching up and ironing the collar pieces together. This is what everything is looking like. There is one mistake that I would like to correct. If you've done yours and it's not perfect, mine is not perfect either. This is a chance you can go back in and make those changes. You can actually go in and undo the seam. It's not the end of the world, I promise. I'm about to do mine. You can undo the seam and redo whatever end or edge that you feel you don't quite like. If you're still making your prototype, feel free to make another one if you really, really don't like yours, correct your mistakes, there's nothing wrong with that, honestly, especially if you're trying this for the first time or this is your first shirt projects, it's totally normal not to get it right the first time. I promise you. I'm just going in here to undo this particular point because I have a little puckering happening there and I don't quite like that, so I'm going to get rid of it. Just going to undo that seam. Let's open it up in little bits, then spread it out and stitch it in again. Going to open it enough so it has enough room to actually even out with the other side. Let's try this again. [MUSIC] With both edges folded in and pressed like this, this is ready to be joined to the neck line of my shirt. I want the prints to be on this side of the shots, then I want the orange to be inside. When the collar is rolled down, you see a little bit of the orange coming through. I'm going to join this inner seam first. This edge on this side, stitch that all the way across. Then use this one to collar it off like that all the way around. Because I've already gone into the press exactly where I wanted to be stitching. You just need to pin along that fold edge. [MUSIC] I'm going to be top stitching this entire part to close off the collar. This is going to be visible on the front of your shirt, so just take your time, don't rush it. I am going to take my sweet time doing this part because I want to get it right. [MUSIC] This would require one last press, so everything is nice and flat across the board. Once that is pressed and you're happy with the outcome of your collar, you can try it on just to check how it fits if you like how it's looking so far. Feel free to make any changes according to your personal preference. Now that the collar is all done, this is going to be put away and you need to grab your sleeve pieces. That's the main sleeve and the sleeve placket. That's what we're going to be working on next before adding the cuff to finish up the sleeves. [MUSIC] 11. Sewing: Sleeves: We are going to be working on the sleeves. I know sleeves are hard, sleeves are scary. They scare me till today, so you are not alone. We're going to get through this together, I promise you. This sleeve is going to have a plack head sitting on the side that's going to be connected to the cuff. We'll take it one step at a time. To remove and reduce your chances of error, I would highly recommend you actually draw in the line that we had on our pattern just to show where we're going to be placing the pocket. Draw that on your sleeve and draw that on your pocket piece. This one has been fused on the wrong side of the fabric, so the thread and the line and everything will be tucked away nicely. This is the right side that we're going to end up seeing. The fuzy just gives it a bit more structural stability, so it will sit really nicely on the bottom of the sleeve. The first thing I'm going to do with this is I'm actually going to put the right side of the pocket against the wrong side of the sleeve. I want to match this line to the line that I've drawn underneath. What I'd like to do is actually just go through with a pin to check if they meet. Then if they don't I try to like move things around on to redo case. I need to move it a little bit more. Move this way. Pin here and pin there. The first step I'm going to do with draining the pocket to the sleeve is I'm going to stitch along these choke line joining both this little piece to the sleeve on the wrong side of the fabric. You would want to stitch as close as possible to that dot. This you will stitch like that around like this and then back to the middle. Stitching around the line that we've drawn. Because this line that we have, we're going to actually cut it open, and then flip this piece inside out. One step at a time, let's take this to the machine. I'm going to be sewing half a centimeter away from the choke line. [MUSIC] What may be helpful if you draw on to eyeball the way I'm doing it now, you can actually draw in the stitch line like the line I just stitched. You can actually draw that by chalk and just stitch along that line, so you have something guiding you as you sew along. [MUSIC] Now when you come to this middle point, we're going to cut through both layers. The sleeve itself and the pocket, you are going to cut all the way and then stop roughly about here. This just pop up in there. Stopover here. Then you want to cut a triangle that goes from this point to as close as possible to that edge. From this point as close as possible to this edge. By cutting this, you allow yourself to be able to turn this piece inside out a lot easier. Because the closer it is to the edge of this stitch on this side and that side, you have just a little bit more room to wiggle this to the right side of the sleeve. Here we go. I just cut through, cut on that direction and in the other direction as well. Now, along this edge, I'm going to be ironing this side like this. This one first and then this one as well. On this one, I'm going to actually fold and iron twice, so a second time to go like this. [MUSIC] Once both edges are folded and pressed in nicely, I'm going to fold this and push down through to the right side of the sleeve to reveal this end. Now the shorter side, that doesn't have the point. This side I'm going to fold against itself to hide this seam that we made earlier on. You want to talk that seen inside like this, then use this one to consume it nicely. I will just grab a pin to do that for us. You can give this oppress at this point if you want to. I always think if you put a pin, you'll be able to get away with having it like that for now. This is later taken to the machine. I'm going to be sewing along this edge. From the bottom all the way to the top, you don't need to reach the very edge. I'll say stop like a centimeter before the edge would definitely like a very slim edge stitch just to hide that, seeing those underneath. [MUSIC] After that edge, I'm going to come to this side and push this underneath, then fold this one over. This is concealing the one that we did earlier on. Kind of like that. For this end that is still open, I would need to stitch up this way, but I want the shape on the top to be more triangular shape. Let me just pop some pins on this side. That keeps this down, [inaudible] have this way instead, quickly as bulk. On the head I am going to fold it one time like this, another time like that to make a little triangle. On the machine, I'm going to sew along this edge. Just on this side, this part has to be open to open up the sleeve. I'm going to sew on this edge, like sew up this triangular edge down to this point. Then back up until you hide this raw edge that is here. I sew up until this edge on this side. [MUSIC] Just pluck it all done. This is what it looks like. Any openings like this. It looks like from the front. If you've done this correctly, this opening should point in the back. I know it's right because this is the back of my sleeve because this has two notches and thus the front. When you have it on, it folds towards the back of your shirt. This is how you know you've done it the right way. This is what it looks like from the back I'm going to give it a nice press just to finish all of the ends, and then I'll add the curves after joining the side seam. [MUSIC] After fitting on the placards, I'm going to put right-side to [inaudible] of my sleeve because I want to sue up the side seam. Just going to sew on a regular one centimeter sewing allowance. I have substituted off, I'm going to over-lock it then just sew. Have that seam nice and tidy on the inside of the shirt too. The reason why you sew up the side seam is because you've made a new opening by creating this plaque over here, this is going to become the new opening of the shirt when you take it off or when you put it back on. If you don't sew up the side seam, you're going to have two openings and it will be confusing on how you would fit the calf afterwards. This I'm just going to stitch up real quick. [MUSIC] I have over locker here. I'm going to be using this to overlook the edge of the sides seam before joining it into the arm hole and before adding the calf on the bottom of the sleeve. We haven't finished our best seam allowance on the inside of the sleeve. [MUSIC] I have overlooked the side seam of the sleeve. This is what it's looking like so far. It's looking really pretty, it's coming together really, really nice. [MUSIC] 12. Sewing: Cuffs: With this done, the next thing I'm going to fit into this leaf is the cuff. The cuff I've applied a similar styling for the color. I have one side an orange and the other side with print. Just need to set this aside and grab the cuff pieces. There are two pieces like this. You can cut yours as one big square. When you make your pattern, don't have the similar ones on the bottom edge and you just have it as a one piece. You just essentially you just need to fold this like this, join up the size and attach it to your sleeve. But if you've cut yours like mine, which is two separate pieces, I am going to be sewing up the sides, the bottom and off the side again, leaving one end open for me to turn everything inside out, and that's how I'm going to fit it to the bottom of the sleeve. Realistically, this is my machine, make sure all of the edges are matching, add a pin or two. Everything is knot and quilt. Let's put one here or there. I will be sewing on a one-centimeter seam allowance, which is what my sewing pattern has. [MUSIC] To ensure I have a nice corner on both edges of my cuff, I'm going to go in with my small scissors. This one has a pointed edge. This is going to allow me to really push through this corner, through this side, like so. Having nice sharp point. Going into trim the excess around the corners really helps because you just reduce any bulk or excess fabric that prevent this from coming out nice and sharp like the edge, like it's looking like right now. I am going to press this before I connect it to the hemline of my sleeve. [MUSIC] I am going to be painting one side of the cuff to the hemline of the sleeve. This is a wrong side of the sleeve. I am going to be joining it this way first, because I want the top stitch to be on the right side of the cuff. This side here, I am just going to put a pin that goes right to the edge. If your sleeve hem is bigger than the cuff, like mine is, this is your opportunity to make a pleats to get rid of the excess. It could also be a decorative thing where you gather in the excess into the cuff like a blouse I wore recently that had like a full sleeve and then it gathered into the cuff, as another design feature that you can make. This one I'm going to pin here. I want the search from here to here, I want my pleats to sit right in the middle. This is going to move everything here, like this. The direction you want your pleat to face is up to you. If you haven't it facing backwards like this, just be mindful that it might points to the front or the back of your sleeve. You might want to actually pin down and then look at what it looks like. Turn it inside out, then see if you're happy with whatever direction that it's facing. There you are. Good. The pleat here is facing, a super notch is facing the front, so it's going to be a pleat that goes in that direction. I actually quite like that. Already I have it come forward. This one, I am going to be stitching like this over the pleats to this side on just one side of the cuff first, and then I'll go back in with this other side too already finished it nicely. [MUSIC] Just going to tug this into this side like so. We'll wrap it around like this. Fold it over. Same on this side. This is how always be finishing off the cuff. I have folded over the second edge to conceal the stitch that we just made, and by just stitching across over this point it's going to up it to finish it up. I'm good this is the right side of the sleeve. I am in control of how tidy and how neat that stitch is going to be. I'm going to take this to my machine and put it together to finish this up. This is what the sleeve situation is looking like with the cuff and the placard all stitched in. It is the most satisfying feeling in the world, way you do this. There is a spot that it hits that until you try it for yourself you'd understand what I mean. It just looks so beautiful, so well-made. I see adding this placard is something that just makes the finishing on the shirt so much better. You can decide to have yours as a point if you wanted or have it just like us. Irregular square, if you don't want to fold this in the way I've done mine. You could add a zigzag in there or another stitch just to secure that end. We could have it as I've done mine. It works just as well. This is what everything is looking like. Now that my sleeve is all done, the other sleeve is exactly the same process. You need to add your placard, your cuff, and join up the side seam as well. Feel free to rewind and take your time making parts die are bit tricky or not as straightforward for you. Just take it at your own pace. I'm going to go ahead to work on my second sleeve. When we're back, I'll show you how to join the sleeves to the shirt. [MUSIC] 13. Sewing: Attach the Sleeves: I have worked on my second sleeve and have it ready here. These are ready to go into the arm hole of the shirts. I'm going to show you on one side. The second side is essentially the same process so that way you can just follow through and do that for yourself. For joining in the arm hole, I'm going to start on this side. That is the front. I'm going to find the sleeve that has corresponding side. This is what you call joining on the round. There are two ways that you can do this. You can do this on the flat, which is when you join your shoulder seam first and then you need the side seam open, then you work your sleeve into the curve of your shirt. Well, now that we have this side scene closed off on the shirts and on the sleeve we're essentially joining two circles together. I like to always start from the underarm or the sleeve head and then pin other notched points together. That way everything fits where it's meant to go. I have this side seam point for both the sleeve and the shirts. I'm going to match them off in place, putting right sides facing each other. Just put that here that one pair. I'm going to look for the notch for my sleeve head. That I'm going to connect it to the shoulder seam that is right on top here. Just look for the ones for the back. Here they are. The aim here is to stitch the sleeve into the arm hall with just one take. Like joining any two secular seams, you would have to ease things into each other as sleeves can be very scary. I admit that. It's okay if you have to rewind, rewatch and try this a couple of times before you get it right. It's also okay if you try it and you find that maybe there's a possible excuse that you don't really like, you can unpick that and do it again until you reach a point that you're actually happy with. I'm just going to go in here to just add a few more pins around my sleeve and distribute the ease that the sleeve has because the sleeve is just a little bit bigger than the armhole and that's because it just adds a little bit of room for movement when you lift your arms up, when you hug someone when you grab things. That's the reason why most sleeves are typically bigger than the arm hole of a shirt or a blouse or fur jacket. The process of fitting the sleeve into the arm hole is typically called easing in. This I'm really going to distribute across as much as I can. When I'm just stitching both curved edges together I don't have to think too much. Can we just add some more pins are on this points? That looks good. This looks fine. This one needs to ease a bit same as here. I'm going in here to stitch in the first sleeve on this side of the shirt. This, I am going to be sewing only one centimeter seam allowance. I'm going to be sewing really slowly because I want to try and get it right and minimize my errors. However, if it doesn't turn out perfect the first time, I'll just go back in and make any necessary changes. [MUSIC] With both sleeves stitched into the arm hole of the shirt. I'm going to go into overlap them just to tidy up the seams on the inside as well. [MUSIC] This is what the shirt is looking like. Sleeves are in, cuffs are in. I am in love. This looks really good so far. It's always so nice when I fit a sleeve. I've actually fit it nicely with no weird gathers, no weird puckers. Everything looks really nice and straight and I haven't even given this a press yet. I'm happy with this so far. Like I always say, if yours is not come out, A plus perfect, feel free to go back in and make any changes that you see or you deem perfect or possible for you. You could also rewind, and rewatch bits that you weren't really sure off maybe, how's it like ease certain points A or how to match the notches? Feel free to do that as well at your own pace so you don't feel overwhelmed with the process. Now that this is all done, we're going to move on to the next step of finishing up the shirt, which is adding the dots for definition, and some buttons so you can do it up, a second to a button-up shirt and have it open if you wanted to as well. [MUSIC] 14. Adding Definition with Darts: Now this is what the shirt is looking like, I'm obsessed honestly. You could leave yours as this relaxed, comfy fit that I have on here, or you could add in the darts that we placed on the patterns in the front and on the back. I'm actually going to be just pinning mine on my body because I want to do mine slightly differently. Feel free to take away even more if you want to shape in your shirt and have it really contour to your body, or you can honestly leave it the way it is now, I think it looks really cool just like this. You could wear it open or closed, it's up to you. I'm just going to go ahead to pin my darts away to ensure that the darts come out as accurate as possible. I've just added some pins to hold the front end where the buttons are going to go next. I have my pack of pins here. I'm going to start from this side, and actually I want to do what I would call invisible dart. It's not really going to look like typical darts that will be stitched on the wrong side of the fabric. This one is actually just going to be tacked around the waistline for about 2-3 inches, so you see the pleat at the bottom and on top. I want to try and match it to where my nipple is, which is around there. If your mannequin is your size, you can do this on your mannequin as well, but the mannequin here is, the chest is not the same as mine and same as the waist and the hips, so I just want to do it on my body to have the best fit. I'm going to grab a pin, try not to go too deep, pleat couple instead. We add one more. Correct. I'm going to do this on the second side, and to ensure that they are the same distance from this seam to this edge. I'm going to take a note of what the distance is there that's two inches and then I show you what I did. I'm basically just going to grab the excess material that is around my waist, this piece of fabric. Then I'm going to fold it in this direction against itself. Then to be sure that both darts are the same distance from the center front edge or from this seam, I just going to double-check that's 2.5 I want to move this one a little bit forward. We want to ensure that the fold is in line with my nipple points so it sits just underneath my breast. I'm just going to to place a pin there. Careful not to ***** yourself. The front darts are end, but to do the ones in the back I'm going to take this off, place it on the mannequin and show you how to pin away the darts on the back of the shirt on a mannequin if you have one. I have my shares on the mannequin with the two front darts pinned away. I have tried to space them from the middle of the placards by 2.5 inches, so from the middle of this to this edge here, 2.5 from there to here and the same on the other side. When it's time for me to stitch, I'd ensure that the stitch on both sides are actually the same height from the shoulder all the way down. If you do this on yourself or on a mannequin, just try to have everything centralized and symmetrical as for the left and for the right-hand side. For the back, let's just work our way there. I'm going to find the middle of the back of the shirt. I think it's so hard to fold. I'm just going to fix a pin there. There it is and I'm going to here the way the darts along top back. It's basically just a way to add shape. I have pinned away this much from this side. This is about half an inch, so a total of one inch on this side. I'm just going to fold it inwards like so and then I want to pin it against this edge. The darts on the actual pattern is about one inch on the back so I'm still within my limits. If you want to take away even more, feel free to do so. Can really customize it to your liking. This, I'm going to stitch as a top stitch exposed so I'm going to only stitch about this much along this portion here and have this pleat on the top and on the bottom as a design feature. You can stitch your dart inward if we don't want it like this, you can basically just grab your pattern piece and then transfer the points along the top, the bottom, and the waistline on the wrong side of your shirt and just stitch that away. If you don't want to do the way I have done mine now, the option is really up to you. There's no right or wrong way it's like what you prefer. I've always wanted to try out darts like this so I felt the shirt was the perfect opportunity to actually do so. I'm going to take this in my machine, stitch the back darts and then the ones in the front as well. I'm just going to go ahead to stitch this down. The way I'm stitching this is slightly different from how you would sew it if you want to stitch up your darts from your sewing patterns. This I have folded on itself on the right side of the fabric and I really need to be stitching it for around 1.5 inch on the front, that's how much stitch I'm going to be stitching in, and then 2 inches on the back. To ensure that both front darts are even in terms of how far they are from the headline of the shirt, I'm just going to double-check if they are the same length. This is 10 inches let's see what the other one is saying because once I stitch that in, there's no turning back. That is 10.2, so we can move a little bit lower. So with a chalk, that would be easily like remove with a damp cloth. I'm just going to take off the chalk marks when I'm done stitching in the darts. I'm going to be stitching from this point to this point. This width is 1.5 inch and this is just around my waistline. This is very different from where it was stitched it up using the same patterns, I can measure an error so bear that in mind. Waist is a very narrow as stitches, we're going to see it from here to here on my sewing machine [MUSIC] 15. Finishing with Buttons: The final step to finishing up the shirt is to add the button holes and the buttons. I'm going to be showing you how I'm going to do mine on this cuff here. I'm just going to have one button, you can add more if you like. I will say that every domestic sewing machine is different so please check your manual to see if your machine comes with the buttonhole function. The foot, the settings, everything vary from one brand to the other so it's worth having a look. There's also the option of hand sewing your buttonholes if you wanted to do that instead of sewing with the machine. So sew your buttons by hand and your bottom holes by hand as well. Now, we're to work on mind. This is the button I am working with. It's a metal shank button that is satin covered in black. This, you can buy online, you could also have yours custom made in the same fabric as your shirt. I just grabbed this black one because it works really well with the prints of my shirt. I could have used red, orange but I just thought black was a really nice happy medium. I want the button to sit on this side and the buttonhole to be on this side because that way, I will be able to go over the button here with the buttonhole that I'm going to fix on this side. Just going to go in here to mark where I want my buttonholes to sit. I will come in here and find the middle point where I want that buttonhole to sit. The button is about half an inch diameter or 1.5 centimeter. That's how wide my button is. I'm just going to mark that as a guide for when I go into fits the buttonhole here. Just mark this half an inch away. I'm going to mark the end. This I'm going to take to the machine and stitch the buttonhole on this side. [MUSIC] That looks so good. So nice. It's even more satisfying on the orange end because he can clearly see. This hole I can cut open with my scissors. If you have tiny scissors, you can use that as well. You could also use a blade to cut the buttonhole open. Just remember to put a pin at the beginning and at the end, so that prevents you from cutting beyond the edges of the buttonhole. Voila we have a buttonhole. Nice. With this intact, I am going to mark the point for the button on the other end. Just lay this over like this, grab a pin, that's going to help me know what points I can mark on the bottom here. Then lift this up and then just mark that point with a chalk. I can remove that. Essentially going to stitch my buttonhole on this chalk point here. Then just stitch this over three, four times just to secure button in place. I'm going in here and secure that stitch. I like to tie a knot. Some people don't but I do. I don't just trust that loop I did earlier on. I had to do double knots just then keep it nice and secure. Moment of truth, see if it fits. We have it. Button on one cuff done. I'm going to repeat the same thing on the other cuff and on the front of the shirts and show you what everything looks like when it's all done. [MUSIC] 16. Final Thoughts: We're all finished with the shirt, his is what mine looks like on. I have all of my buttons in on the front and on the cuffs as well. Something I would like to point out for women's shirt is that it has to go in this direction. The right side bears the button holes and then the left side bears the buttons, it's the other way around on men's shirt. So just be mindful of that when you're coming up with your own design. You can also customize the placement of your dots around the waist. Mine I have decided to do like this, it's unexposed dot and I just stitched it very tiny around this area on the front and on the back. You can have yours wider or even stitch it inwards, typical dots are on shirts and on dresses, the freedom and the choice is up to you. If you don't get this right the first time, if yours does not look as good and as peg as mine, please take it at your own pace. Re-watch things again, try things out until you get to the point that you're happy with the outcome of your shirt. I can't wait to see the fabric that you guys choose as well or your phone brands, designs, how you play around with the length of the shirt and length of your sleeve. If you are going to be experimental, you know know different colors for your cuffs, I'll pay your colors as well because that's something you can actually do if you want to have a more playful design, I really cannot wait to see that. Please share all your pictures in the project gallery and there we could just help each other off as well. Until next time, I can't wait to see what you guys create. Thank you so much for joining me on this class. This has been an amazing experience and I hope you'll take away something useful that you can use for making a shirt or any other garment in the future. Take care. Bye.