Much snipping for change of topic...
What I'm talking about here is the long band down the front of a man's dress shirt that's 1 1/2" wide and has the buttons or the buttonholes.
Most of the home sewing patterns I've seen have you cut a straight strip of fabric and attach it to the body of the shirt to make those bands, which gives you yet another place you've got to cut and sew perfectly straight lines or things get wonky.
Ready to wear uses a 2.75" extension off the CF of the shirt body, and interfaces it, folds it twice, and stitches and presses it flat to make the front button or buttonhole bands. Much easier, faster, and more accurate.
Here's how you'd draft the changes on the pattern, for a woman's shirt. For a man's shirt, swap right and left in the instructions below, which derive from Connie Amaden Crawford's Guide to Fashion Sewing -- she's the one who taught me basic drafting.
**The standard 1.5" shirt placket, and how to draw it.** Here's the right side placket, and how to construct it:-Make two copies of the front pattern piece, adding a 2.75" extension to the pattern piece from the center front. Mark one of them "Right side".
-Start with the CF line of the shirt. Notch it top and bottom.
-Draw two lines 3/4" on each side of the CF line. That's going to be the actual shirt placket.
-Measure over 1/2" from the line that you drew that's farthest from the shoulder. Notch it at top and bottom, too.
-Measure over 1.5" from that line you've just drawn (away from the shoulder), and draw one more line. That's your right front pattern piece. Now to sew it up:
-Cut a 1.5" wide strip of fusible interfacing, and fuse it to the wrong side of the fabric, right at the edge.
-Fold the fabric to enclose the interfacing (you'll be folding on the notches farthest from the shoulder). Press.
-Fold once more, same direction, at the second set of notches (CF line). press.
-Sew 1/4" in from that last pressing, catching all layers.
-Open the placket out flat and press -- this gives you a 1/4" flapdoodle on the outside of the shirt, toward the shoulder.
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Now for the left front placket -- if you look at the second copy of the pattern piece you've made, it's exactly the same as the right side (so you get to cut the front of the shirt double! Only thing that changes is the position of the notches for the left side placket. But just for completeness, let's draw a separate left side. --Grab that other pattern piece, and label it as the left. --Measure 1/2" in from the cut edge, and notch it top and bottom. --Measure over 1.5" and notch it top and bottom. The CF line is still 3/4" farther on from the last line you've drawn here. Sewing the left placket (underlap).
-- Cut another 1.5" wide strip of interfacing and fuse it to the wrong side of the left shirt front, 1/2" over from that cut edge. (Yes, there really is 1/2" of un-interfaced material on that edge) -- Press the cut edge over the interfacing... so you're turning that 1/2" of material over the interfacing. -- Roll the interfacing over, so you're pressing at the second set of notches. -- Topstitch at 1/4". Done.
Once you figure out the roll under and stitch bits, it's an incredibly fast way to make a shirt placket. Turn, press, turn, press, sew, press and you're done! It's really amazing! And if you're working with something that has a horizontal pattern to it, like my beloved plaids, IT ALWAYS MATCHES!!!!! YAHOOOOOOOOO!
------------ In practice, what I do is to draft the 2.75" extension on the shirt front, mark the CF with clips top and bottom, and ignore putting the marker clips on for the right and left sides (Connie will give me one of Her Patented Disapproving Looks for not notching, but I haven't screwed this part up yet.)
I take the shirt fronts to the ironing board, and figure out which one is the overlap (since I mostly make men's shirts), and fuse my precut
1.5" wide interfacing strip to the edge, fold and press, and sew. Then I take the underlap side and my big clear quilting ruler, and drop it over the shirt front edge so I'm covering 1/2" of shirt fabric, then fuse the next strip of interfacing on, press, roll, press and then topstitch, and I'm done. When I've been sewing someplace where I don't have access to the ruler, a strip of 1/2" wide tape has worked well for a spacer.Anyhow, when you're ready to tackle a tailored shirt, there are several minor changes that you can make to the methods and order of construction that will vastly speed up the construction process and give you as good, if not better, results than the standard pattern instructions. Margaret Islander shows most of them in her Shirts, etc. video; Connie has them in her Guide to Fashion Sewing and in the new patternmaking book that should be out this fall. Both of these ladies come from teaching patternmaking and sewing to folks headed into the RTW industry, where time is money. I just wish I'd been taught using these methods from the start.
Kay