
Dress Shirt Session 2: How to Measure and Select the Correct Shirt Size
Ashley HoughDescription
Before you can make a shirt, you need to know what size to make it. Learn how and where to take the proper body measurements and what kind of measuring tape is right for the job. You’ll also learn what to do if all your measurements don’t fit into the same size category on a commercial pattern.
Now before we can actually start making our shirt, we need to know what size to make it, and knowing the size of clothes you wear doesn't really help you out in terms of sewing. I may wear an 8 or 10 or 12, maybe a size medium, but that doesn't tell me what size I need to make my shirt or what size I'm gonna cut my pattern pieces. To know that, we need to actually take some body measurements. The body measurements you're going to take are going to be based off of what you're making and that they are listed for you on the back of your pattern. So you see here, we're making a shirt.
So it makes sense that we're taking a chest or bust measurement, as well as a hip measurement. You can see they have all different measurements here, and then they have some suggested sizes. So we are going to take those measurements and then see which size our measurements fall into. Now we're gonna start with our chest or bust measurement. So again, I have my non-stretchable fiberglass ruler, measuring tape here, and we will take our bust measurement.
Now this needs to be just around the widest part of the body up here. We'll take our measurement here, wrap it around and see we're right around 40. And you see, I sort of just pulled it a little bit snug just to where it's not pulling too tight but it's not really loose either. So you want to get as accurate of a measurement as you can, but you don't want to pull the measuring tape so tight that it ends up making it, I mean, I could probably pull it all the way into 39 1/2, but then, when I make my finished shirt, it's gonna end up being too small. So I just want it nice and snug.
You can see we're right at 40. So I'm gonna go back over to my pattern piece and find where 40 is. See, it's right here under the suggested size medium. So I'm just gonna circle it so I don't forget. Now just because I have that measurement doesn't mean, okay, now I can start making a medium.
It's really important that you take the measurements in all the places listed because your body measurements might not fall into all one category, and that's okay. I can show you how to make adjustments for that. But you don't want to just assume any measurements based off of your first one. So the next one we need to take is the hip measurement. And again, this is gonna be around the widest part of your hips.
We wrap our measuring tape around, get our sleeve out of there, by the widest part and wrap our tape around. And we are right around 39 3/4. Now having one that's either 1/4 or 3/4, that's not gonna be anywhere on your actual patterns. So we're gonna go ahead and just round that up to 40. So I have right here, that it would be M 40, which actually falls into a medium, which is surprising.
Not all the time will you get all your measurements to line up. Now we have another pattern here, again, still a dress shirt pattern, but they have another measurement that you'll want to take, and that is your neck band measurement. Now, if you're gonna make a shirt specifically, maybe for a man who's gonna wear a tie, you're gonna want to make sure you take this measurement because you want to make sure that the collar of the shirt fits to where you can then wear your tie. So we're gonna go up here to our neck and we are gonna take this measurement here. And again, this is why I want to make sure that I am just pulling it snug because you don't want to pull too tight and have it to where you wouldn't be able to button your top button at the shirt, but you don't want it to be too loose because then you wouldn't actually be able to wear a tie, or it might look kind of sloppy if you have a tie on there and your shirt is actually too big.
So we have our measurement here and we're right at 15. So we will go over to our pattern piece here, neck band, and we would have a 15. Now on here, based off of the neck band, 15 inches, we would be a size 38, and up here we have a 40. Now 38 to 40 isn't that big of a difference, and that all still falls within a medium. But now, say my hip measurement was a little larger.
Maybe I was up to 43, and I'd be between a medium and a large. Well, we need to make some adjustments to our commercial pattern piece, and this is where it differs a little bit from drafting your own pattern start to finish. If I was drafting my own pattern, I could just simply draw out all my lines to my exact measurements, whereas your pattern already has your medium, your large, extra large. It has all of your size lines on it. So in this case, if I needed to take a measurement that fell in the medium category at one area, but a large category at another area, I would simply just grade the pattern.
So I'd take, starting at the medium and just draw a line all the way out over here, and I want to end at the large. Now I just freehanded it. If you want to use a ruler, you can even buy some curved rulers and make that really precise. You can do that. But that's a simple way that you can make the adjustment between different pattern sizes.
You can go outward from medium all the way up to extra large, or you can go the opposite. So you could take it from an extra large down to a medium. And that's an easy way that you can make the adjustments on your overall body pattern pieces. Now, there is one measurement for dress shirts that you'll notice isn't on the actual pattern back, but it is important to take when you are going to sew a shirt, and that is your arm measurement. Because you don't want to have a perfectly fitted shirt in the body and the neck, and then your sleeves are way too short or way too long.
So in order to take that measurement, you're going to want to measure from the top of your shoulder down to your wrist. Now, if you have somebody that can do that measurement for you, that's great. If not, you might just have to kind of balance your tape measure on your arm and take that measurement. Or, say you're making this for somebody else, and they're not available to have you take their measurements. If they have a shirt that already fits them perfectly, just take their existing shirt and measure how long their sleeve is on the shirt that you know already fits them.
Then, once you get to your actual shirt pattern piece, it has a really handy marking on it right here. And these double lines, anywhere on any pattern piece where there'd be a sleeve, if it's on the front or back, that has these double lines here, that means you can lengthen or shorten the pattern somewhere in this area. So all I would do, if I needed to shorten it by an inch, I could either cut it or I could simply fold right here. Now, if I wanted to lengthen it, I would cut it apart add some tissue paper or pattern paper behind it and pull it out an inch, and then I would have a longer pattern piece. You want to make sure you're doing your lengthening and shortening at this area.
I can't just simply add inches onto the bottom of our pattern piece because this is already the width that it needs to be to fit onto our cuff. So if we change it down here, then we have to change yet another pattern piece. So make sure you're making those adjustments in the right areas. So you'll want to take all your measurements, record them, find out what size your measurements fit into and make any adjustments to your pattern pieces you need, and then you'll actually cut out all of your pieces. Now, when you're doing your cutting, there are some markings on the pattern pieces that are important to know, and you need to know what they mean.
And in particular, ones around the outside edges that come into play immediately, when you're cutting out your fabric, are notches, and these are these little triangles here. And these are what help you line up your fabric pieces. So you'll line up your front or your back at the side. You'd match notches. Same thing at a shoulder.
And when you're cutting out your fabric, if you have a triangle that goes inward, all you would do is cut the fabric out. And that's how you do your notch. Now, if you make a change to the pattern, like this line I have here, I need to transfer that marking. So if this is my new line, I need to just draw a new notch right there, so I don't forget and accidentally just cut along and have no marking at all. So you want to make sure you're transferring all of your markings onto new pattern lines that you're making.
So again, find your measurements, find out what size you are, cut out all your pattern pieces and then cut out your fabric. Come back and we will be ready to actually start sewing our shirt.
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