For the Men

So I mentioned I'd made the Workwoman Guide's Men's Shirt for the laboring class for my son and had all sorts of problems. I chatted with Liz Clark and she suggested dropping the front neckline a little to see if it would improve the fit for my son's slightly slouched posture. So, I again took off my neckband, cut down an inch and curved it back to the shoulders, re-attached the neck band and voila, we now have a shirt that fits. I now can say I would recommend the Workwoman's guide free men's shirt pattern, with the slight adjustment in the neckline.

Before I did that nifty trick, I decided to just try using instructions that Liz had linked to at Tea in a Teacup on a second shirt to see if that would solve my problem. The style there is slightly earlier, so the measurements are a tad different. So, I used more the measurements in the Workwoman's Guide, but followed the construction directions at Tea in a Teacup. The instructions were definitely helpful, especially for making nicer neck gussets. The whole shirt just seemed to come together better, but I still had that slouchy-shoulder-weird-neck fit, but once I cut down my neckline, the problem was solved. Our modern posture is just too bad to fit these proper-cut shirts, but maybe they were just weird fitting then, too?

I had wanted to do one of the gentleman's pleated fronts from the Workwoman's Guide, but because the instructions were not enough for me, I gave up on that idea and just made my son another laboring class shirt with my leftover sateen from my husband's shirts. I also thought I had the pattern I had used for my husband, but realized I'd borrowed it. I couldn't figure out the construction without taking my husband's shirts apart, and I'm not willing to do that, so that was another reason to not do pleats.

I think I'll go back and fix my husband's old shirt, too, so it will fit better.

For my son's pants, we took a little trip to the DI to see what we could find since I didn't want to take the time to make pants completely from scratch. After some picking through, we came across some cotton-linen pants and some cotton pants, both Banana Republic. He's got a 28/29" waist and 32" inseam, so it's really hard to find things that fit him, and both of these were bigger in the waist. I figured I could do some alterations to make it work. We did find one 29"/32" in synthetic fabric, but I don't know how comfortable those will be on the long haul and in the heat. We bought them anyway for $6 in case my alterations didn't work out.

The original waists:

My Laughing Moon pants pattern that I've never used has a notch in the back waistband and a "belt." So by cutting off the length in the hem of the pants, I was able to make the belt. I hacked a "V" notch.

Oh my, some silly person had stapled their pants. Luckily I fixed that.

For the cotton/linen pants I just took in the waist in between the side seam and the pocket. I'm not sure if it's enough, but the pants do have a draw string I can pull in and stitch down.

Because pants are so tight these days, my son wondered about the leg width. I cut out his size from the pattern and found that the width of these DI pants is actually pretty close to the real deal. You can see he has the short legs like me.

I'm taking these trek projects one step at a time. If I get time, I'll add buttons for suspenders (I'll just have to remember to buy the suspenders!) I'd love to make him a vest, too (not required for trek, so he probably won't even wear it) and a cravat (I even have some silk I can play with) to complete the ensemble.