Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit

The Ultimate Guide to Fit, Style, and Construction from Collared and Cuffed to Blouses and Tunics

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Pub Date 18 Dec 2018 | Archive Date 22 Jan 2019

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Description

Do you long to get a perfect fit when sewing your own shirts and blouses? In Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit, author, teacher, and shirt-sewing expert David Page Coffin shows how you can easily transform the patterns included with the book into three different customized basic shirt silhouettes.

Learn to work with any body shape for men or women to achieve unique, personalized, and well-fitted basic shirt patterns for yourself or anyone else. The book includes detailed explanations of essential techniques; clear, step-by-step photos; and basic patterns for sizes XXXS to XXXL that are included in a pocket behind the front cover.

Discover unique fitting options for shirts and learn how to drape fabrics to create a wrinkle-free garment. With these techniques, you’ll understand how to get a great fit with almost no measuring for any and all body types, including plus-size and athletic figures. 

Using his couture-inspired draping methods on both standard and custom-shaped body forms (with great tips on how to make your own form), David then demonstrates how to adjust shoulder and side seams, necklines, sleeves, and armholes, and add darts or new seams to achieve the fit you want for each silhouette: loose, fitted, or tight.

Once you've covered the fundamental concepts and techniques, put your knowledge into practice with the four distinctive, original step-by-step shirt design and construction projects. These projects offer a variety of classic shirt, shirt-jacket, and dress shirt styles you can make and perfectly fit with the included patterns.
In this book you’ll also learn:Correct ways to drape patterns in different fabrics for a great fit.How to make a denim Western shirt with sleeve plackets and snaps.Construction tips that will make your garments look more professional.How to create a fitted wrapped shirtdress that can be any length.Ways to position and reshape a yoke.Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit will give you the skills you need to get the right fit every time!
 
Do you long to get a perfect fit when sewing your own shirts and blouses? In Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit, author, teacher, and shirt-sewing expert David Page Coffin shows how you can easily...

Marketing Plan

Key Selling Points: The author’s fitting solutions are simple, intuitive, and unique, requiring no math, little measuring, and a minimum of flat-pattern drawing. This is the only book devoted to the fitting issues of shirts, covering all shirt types and all figure types.  

Key Campaign Activity Publicity - Long lead print as well as online craft websites and bloggers in the Craft market as well as holiday roundup outreach Social media outreach thru Quarto  

Consumer: Quarto Knows social media – especially Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook Quarto Knows B2C email campaign Leverage Author on his various websites, Pinterest (1.7K followers) and Facebook (1K followers) NetGalley  

Publicity/Media: Primary craft focus outlets including Vogue Knitting, Better Homes & Gardens, Love of Crochet, Love of Knitting, Sew Simple, Threads, Good Housekeeping, Sweet Paul, Martha Stewart Living, Sew News, American Craft, Knit Scene, Sew it All, Handwoven, Needle Arts and Country Woman Key Craft Websites and Bloggers including Artsy, Crafted, craft Foxes DIY Network Online, How Does She, Six Sisters Stuff, Sew Home, Knitting Daily and Craft Gossip

Trade Review: Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, Bookish, Shelf Awareness, Kirkus, BookTrib

Key Selling Points: The author’s fitting solutions are simple, intuitive, and unique, requiring no math, little measuring, and a minimum of flat-pattern drawing. This is the only book devoted to the...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781589239524
PRICE US$27.99 (USD)
PAGES 144

Average rating from 14 members


Featured Reviews

Sewing garments can be intimidating for even those who have a great relationship with their sewing machines. What sewist hasn't spent the time and money making a garment and been disappointed with the fit? Or has been too intimidated to even try? The book covers fitting for both loose-fitting shirts and fitted shirts using draping methods and then turning your partial drapes into paper patterns. The handling of soft and more structured fabrics are also discussed. To aid in sewing and fitting yourself, instructions are given for creating a mannequin that's an exact replica of your body rather than trying to use a commercial mannequin that doesn't reflect your (or anyone else's) real life proportions. Step-by-step construction instructions are included for a loose, lined shirt jacket, a fitted v-neck dress shirt, a fitted wrapped shirtdress and a tight denim western shirt.

As a novice garment sewist, would I lose the intimidation factor when approaching shirt sewing with the help of this book? Not entirely, but I definitely will be much less intimidated with this information!

Thank you to Quarto Publishing Group - Creative Publishing International and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Thanks to NetGalley, I was able to read Sewing Shirts With A Perfect Fit by David Page Coffin. The book is split into two main sections, the first section has 5 chapters on fit and draping, the second section covers various projects. Rather unexpectedly, Coffin’s book is all about sewing woven shirts that fit using draping rather than flat patterns, or taking measurements.

Section 1 begins with a chapter on the basics of shirts and how they fit, while chapter 2 delves deep into draping. The remaining chapters of section one are about how to drape shirts for specific shirt styles, loose-fitting, fitted and tight-fitting shirts respectively. It also includes information on cloning bodies using foil, and making body forms from the resulting foil wrap.

Section 2 is dedicated to 4 projects to practice the skills you’ve picked up; a loose, lined shirt jacket, a fitted v-neck dress shirt, a fitted wrapped shirtdress, and a tight denim western shirt.

This is a great book, it is absolutely packed with information and photos. The writing, photos, and explanatory diagrams are clear and easy to understand, and made me want to try. And, not only am I seriously considering trying to sew a shirt using the techniques taught, but definitely going to try making a body form from a foil wrap. I will absolutely be adding this to my collection of sewing books as soon as possible.

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After seeing the cover for this book I was immediately impressed that the author would even consider tackling a project as big as discussing and teaching fit techniques for such a wide range of sizes (XXXS to XXXL).

After cracking it open I was immediately impressed with the design and layout of the book. I loved reading the introduction about what to expect from the book, and I appreciate the separation of the book into two distinct parts. The first is about draping; the way David Coffin teaches sewists to achieve a perfect fit is entirely by draping. There is almost no flat pattern drafting, which may appeal to a larger audience of home sewists. The second is about learning by doing; you, the reader, will apply what you have learned from Coffin’s draping/fitting techniques to your own sewing projects, guided by Coffin step-by-step.

Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit is full of helpful illustrations and photographs as well. These prove very helpful because Coffin describes the fit of shirts and relies on the imagery to further communicate his point - and understanding the reasoning behind fitting shirts is essential to actually being able to customize the fit.

One point of criticism for the book, although minor and brought to the reader’s attention within the introduction, is the fact that usually home sewists are sewing for themselves and it is quite difficult to drape or fit clothing on oneself. When you’re sewing for family, friends, or clients, it is not as difficult but to truly succeed at fitting shirts on your own body, a custom dress form will eventually be necessary. These can be pricey or there are many ways to DIY a dress form that fits your measurements, too. In addition to needing a dressform, draping can sometimes feel scary to those who have not attempted it before. And if one does not already have a dressform, it is likely they have not had much or any experience with draping as a fit technique.

My favorite part is Project 3, the fitted wrapped shirtdress. The patterns are downloadable PDFs and Coffin walks you through every step, including construction of the garments. If you enjoy making shirts but get frustrated when the fit doesn’t come out just right, I’d tell you to check out Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit and www.shirtmakingwithdpc.com for more resources.

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Step by step instructions with photographs making this craft doable when I’d otherwise think it was impossible. Impressive and highly recommended!

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I was very excited about reading this book. Fitted shirts are hard to make from a purchased paper pattern without significant pattern alterations to get that perfect fit. What I didn’t know about this book is that making a dress form of your body is essential to learning this process as outlined in the book. A purchased dress form may give you basic dimensions but in order to do this “perfect fit” book justice, making a custom form is essential. For example, knowing the slope of your shoulders, your posture, the way your belly protrudes. You get the picture. It’s only when you know all these intricacies of your shape can you then cover it properly. The author does suggest that maybe at first you can use a sewing buddy to place the pieces directly on you and vise versa until you can make a dress form. However with all the details involved in this process I imagine you need a very patient and capable sewing friend to do this with.

The book gives very very detailed pictures of every step in the process to show you how to use fabric to drape on your dress form. This way you can see how each piece: yoke, front, back, armholes, sleeves, would hang on you. Then you can remove bunching or wrinkles from the fit by adjusting the fabric pattern you are creating. It’s complicated. The detailed pictures help but until you get your hands busy actually trying this process it might seem overwhelming. The finished products from the projects shown are beautifully done. Each project has photos of every single step in the process. If you follow these steps, with practice I’m sure you can achieve a professional looking garment.

One idea that I will be trying is the idea of making an aluminum foil form. You wrap foil around your body, minding all your curves and then cut it up so it will lay flat. After that you can trace the foil pieces out on paper to make paper/fabric pattern pieces with it.

I will say that this author is very passionate and excited about this topic. It does bring an energy to the book that makes it easier to read. I am an advanced sewer and I had no problem understanding the theory of the book and the techniques involved. However I think a beginner sewer would probably feel a little intimidated by the process. One thing that I felt should have been discussed in more detail is the importance of ease, how much space should be left at different parts of the body and why. The discussion of the modern cuts of T shirts were helpful.

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A nice informative book about fitting shirts to all shapes and sizes. The author describes a way of draping shirts and then shaping and sewing. The instructions are easy to understand and the illustrations are clear. At the end of the book are instructions to make examples of different types of shirts.

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Years ago, many people would make their own clothing to achieve the looks they wanted while staying within their budgets. These days, time constraints, decreased opportunities for learning how to sew as well as various options for obtaining clothing while staying within budget have developed. So, less people are sewing.

This book, while not for the absolute beginner, does provide the information and techniques for those people who would like to make their own shirts. The pictures and instructions are clearly written and will assist the sewer in achieving a look that is both professional and custom-made.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book that was provided by the publisher through Net Galley. However, the thoughts and opinions presented here are my own.

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This book was dazzling and mind spinning with the amount of information packed within it. I think it would suit dressmakers with more experience than myself, but I still appreciated its contents. I suspect it will be a go to reference for shirt making when I have more makes under my belt and maybe after I've acquired the necessary dress form.

The book itself is well laid out and illustrated. The author is an expert in his field and his years of accumulated knowledge shine out from his writing.

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Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit is a new comprehensive technical design and sewing guide for shirts. Released 20th Dec 2018 on Quarto's Quarry imprint, it's 144 pages and available in ebook and paperback formats.

Anyone who has sewn from purchased 'standard' paper patterns knows how much fiddling and fitting is necessary to achieve really good results. This book takes a vital wardrobe staple, the shirt, and shows how to drape, fit, create a pattern muslin, choose fabric, along with thorough construction and finishing information. The instructions are very well photographed and the tutorials are very clearly written in a clear step-by-step manner.

The book is peppered with sidebars covering fitting and compensating for common body anomalies such as uneven and rounded shoulders, 'bodybuilder' shoulders/arms, protruding abdomen, and others. After an explanatory introduction about shirts, their parts, and different outline shapes, there are three chapters on creating loose-fitting, close-fitting, and tight-fitting shirts. The book also includes four design projects. There is a cross referenced index and resource list.

Although this book presupposes some familiarity with sewing, a keen beginner could follow the directions (especially if they have occasional access to a sewing mentor/friend). Advanced sewists will also find value here for getting the best results. I admit that I'm quite guilty of wanting to rush ahead and finish a project RIGHT NOW. I'm the bad sewist who cuts into the 'good' fabric without fitting or making a muslin. I'm the bad knitter who generally skips gauge swatching before starting a new project. This book really has inspired me to do better and drape fit my next shirts as well as creating good muslins/slopers.

Five stars. This is a superlatively written book.

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I saw a copy of this come up for review last year but I did not try to get it then because I was nowhere close to sewing a shirt. In 2018 though, I did take a basic sewing course and then followed that up by taking apart a shirt of my husband's that he wanted to throw away and using another fabric to replicate the process along with youtube. I thought it would be as simple as putting together a jigsaw with all the required pieces but it was not. I did manage to get it together and for the past four months I have postponed sewing on the buttons so it just lies unheeded. This last bit was for comic effect.

I then saw this book(again) and requested it this time because I thought I would have a deeper understanding of what it would convey and for the brief period that I would have the advance review copy with me, I would be able to put it to some use. I did not do the last bit but I think it is a very comprehensive collection of instructions. It is definitely not for someone who has never sewn before since it deals more with the finer points of how to actually make garments and in particular shirts. There are detailed patterns included including some helpful tips to get the shaping just right. If I did intend to make shirts on a regular basis,I would turn to this book for advice.It is helpfully divided into different types of shirts in terms of fit and what their differences are. There are draping instructions as well as detailed pictures of the pinning of the parts of the project on a dummy model. There are also projects for each type and would keep someone interested in this very, very busy for quite a while!

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For the serious seamstress and tailorist. This book was extremely advanced for my level (complete beginner)
But will sure make a great resource once I develop my skills and continue to practice.

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Thank you NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for the opportunity to read and review this book.

When it comes to tailoring clothing, David Coffin certainly knows what he is doing.
This book is written for the serious sewist. It is all about draping and fit. It focuses on tailoring to get the best fit for comfort and a wrinkle free appearance.

The author takes you step by step through the process of making the shirt, with clear, easy to follow instructions (as long as you have some sewing experience) and great illustrations and photo examples.

He covers details like making collars and cuffs. Included in the book are projects to try out your newly developed skills at shirt making. This is a great reference book and belongs on the library shelf of every garment maker and sewist.

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