Sunday, September 12, 2010

Blue Striped Man's Shirt ~ sleeve insertion; side seams; hem.


I finally had a stretch of time to sew today. My challenge was inserting a man's shirt sleeve into the actual shirt using a flat-felled seam. I decided not to use my new flat-felled foot. I reseached this process, and sometimes people adjust seam allowances. I cut out this shirt before the research. Therefore, I wasn't able to make any seam adjustments, so I just used the usual 5/8" seam allowance.

I proceeded by inserting the sleeves in the usual way. That is, right sides together shirring the sleeve and easing the cap into the sleeve, pucker-free, before sewing the side seams of the shirt or the sleeve. This was easy, since there really wasn't much ease to deal with.
The flat-felled process is:
~ pressing the seam towards the sleeve
~ trimmed the bottom seam allowance in half
~ folding the top seam allowance in half
~ enclosing the half seam into the whole seam allowance
~ top stitching on the right side.
The real look of the flat-felled seam is on the inside.





Next I worked the side seams. It's the same process as above except I sewed the side seams wrong sides together. The flat-felled seam is right side out.

This is how it usually looks.











Before stopping for the day, I wanted to hem the shirt. When making a narrow hem, I sew two rows of basting stitches 1/4 inch apart. I press the fabric on the first basting line, then I press again on the second basting line, then pin. Using my edging foot, I sewed the hem.

A decorative touch is adding my DS's name on the bottom of the front band.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Patricia, the flat fell seams look great. Also, i noticed on Kbenco's blog that you were looking for photos of the front of the tweed suit with the bias insets from the victoria and albert museum in London. They have a photos of lots of their collection online and here is the link to the tweed suit, which I also admired. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O15694/skirt-suit-no-20-original-c9210/

    sorry for commenting here, but i couldn't leave a comment on kbenco's blog. regards

    Ruth

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you Ruth for the comment and the link!

    ReplyDelete