I need a lightweight white dress shirt. When looking in my closet I decided I had none.
I went to JC Penney's and found none in my size. Then I went to Macy's where the clerk measured me and decided I needed a 16 neck and a 36 sleeve. She found me a Calvin Klein slim-fit shirt.
I told her $75 for a simple shirt was too expensive. She quickly adjusted the price to $45. I guess it pays to haggle!
At home, I noticed the sleeve packets were square and not pointed. I thought this was odd, maybe just a styling feature.
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| Calvin Klein sleeve |
I decided I would use a $12 white sheet from Wal-Mart and Kwik Sew 3883 to see if I could make a similar dress shirt. I used size medium and added 2" to the sleeve length.
The sheet was so wrinkled even after washing, I had to press it with my Singer CSP-1 press I bought from the thrift store last year but I hadn't used much.
An interesting part of this pattern is it has a 1/4" seam allowance. Because of this, after sewing with my Bernina 930 with a 1/4" foot, I serged the seams with my Brother 523.
Another feature not on many shirts, is a sew on button packet for the left side. The right side is folded over as usual. The yoke was quite small, so was the one on the store-bought shirt.
Here is my store-bought shirt modeled with McCall's 7987 slacks I made a while ago.
