Shirt Button Stand

Original Shirt from National Theatre Hire Department

My finished Button Stand

Probably the most challenging part on this shirt so far has been putting in the button stand. It is both similar and very different to the placket we learned how to put in, in fundamental studies. It is different because it is not on a seam and therefore has no seam allowance. It is more similar to the how we made the points on the breeches or the sleeve openings on the blouse. I inspected the example for a while and decided to try a sample on my how to see if I could deduce how it was made. This was semi-success and I showed it to our tutor who said it was close but not quite. He gave me a few more instructions and I tried a second sample. This was also not perfect but I better understood how to do it and felt confident to try it on my shirt front. I am happy with how it has turned out. However I was confused about the length it should be. On the pattern/graph we were given it said the opening was 8” however I measured the example and it was 14” which is a huge difference. This is one of the challenging things about working from a pattern that is a little different from the shirt. I decided to go with 8” because the pattern is what we were mainly to be working from and I figured that perhaps the shirt was just the closest they could find to the pattern. Creating this button stand was useful because it is a similar process to things we have already made but it is a variation and it is definitely building my repertoire of different things I can do.