Shirt Construction

I got quite a lot of books from the library that had anything to do with Victorian tailoring and clothing. An essential piece of clothing for the Victorian man was his shirt which would be worn almost constantly and this particular shirt has been worn and repaired from the 18th all the way to the 19th century.

Back then shirts were practically a bunch of squares and rectangles sewn together with gathering in the sleeves, neck and cuffs.

This are all the shapes for the shirt in the book with a numbered border to figure out the measurements for all of the pieces.

I tested my hemming skills as the shirt has a lot of it

(Hemming on the inside)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

First of all I hemmed everything and sewed on one edge of the underarm gusset to the un-sewed sleeve. This is also a first attempt at adding a neck gusset one of the shoulder which went 

surprisingly well but they were a bit temperamental at times                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

I cut out the cuffs and collar and sewed them together so they were ready to be attached when I got to it.

Using a very long stitch on areas of my shirt that required gathering I pulled the thread and evened out the gathering to sew over with the machine.

I tested out the button hole setting on the sewing machine for future use.

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