For my dad's joint birthday and Christmas present last year I offered to make him a button up shirt that properly fits him. I knew this would be the first project where I properly delve into altering a pattern to fit and was a bit apprehensive about whether I could pull it off. I started work at the very end of November and completed this project in time for Christmas alongside working. I kept things simple this year in terms of makes for people, so that I knew they'd be achievable and I'd not get stressed out. With only two makes, I had just the Wiksten top for my mum to make as well. I chose to make the Fairfield first to get the complicated one done, giving me most of the month to concentrate on it, leaving the easiest sew until last, which was a nice way to finish off in the days leading up to Christmas. I love making presents for family, but it's important to know your limits and what is achievable for you within your time constraints. I didn't leave myself very long because I was actually sewing a couple of other sews for family over the November lockdown. I managed to get the "sew load" this year just right, and even had time to make myself a little Christmas Claudia top out of my mum's Wiksten leftovers, as well as a mask bag for her.
Which adjustments to make?
I had to find out a lot more detail than I usually would ask when I make something for someone re measurements. I needed to know the common fit issues my dad has with RTW shirts; long sleeves, collars too narrow to do up, size of cuff circumference. Those were my starting points, but I needed to check that the measurements of the size I would pick to make him matched up with RTW shirts that do fit him well, and matched up with his body measurements. There were a lot of measurements knocking around so I made a cross-reference table. The difficulty with the adjustments was that I knew my dad didn't fit into one size, and I had to work out how to accommodate a mix of bigger and smaller sizes in the same pattern.
I needed to cross reference- my dad's body measurements with measurements of RTW shirt that fits well and with the body sizes the Fairfield lists as well as its finished garment sizes. Additionally, I used measurements of an already made Fairfield shirt in size M that I made for David (because the measurements didn't seem to match up directly with those cited in the pattern), as well as comparing David's measurements to his M shirt and noting the ease between these 2 measurements, to apply this to my dad's size and work out the size for certain parts of his shirt.
Tips- I made a small diagram with all my seam allowances on each pattern piece because they vary so much due to the flat felled seams. When tracing my pattern pieces, I could draw on these SAs easily and wrote down what they were. This diagram is also helpful when it comes to sewing.
I also wrote down the measurements I needed to make of each alteration on my traced pattern piece right next to the seam/area that needed to be altered before making the alteration.
Key: FF – Fairfield shirt, M FF- size medium Fairfield (etc with sizes).
Table
PROBLEM: TOO SMALL A COLLAR
Adjustment: big neck
Probably the hardest adjustment I had to make and work out. There was a discrepancy between the listed "neck" garment sizes in the pattern and the size of the collar stand (which I measured; it was not provided in the pattern annoyingly). Size M’s collar stand was 43cm, but the neck was only 38.5cm = a 5.5cm seam allowance? I decided to work out how big my dad's collar needed to be by looking at how David's M FF fits him -essentially using ratio to scale up to find my dad's size.
It’s important to note that that collar stand is drafted to be smaller than the size of the neck hole deliberately. There are some notes on this in the pattern instructions and how to avoid this if you don’t want to have to ease in the collar.
My dad's neck circumference =39cm, the same size of the neck listed for M FF garment, not body measurements. This would therefore certainly be too small.
I found out the garment measurements only with my “here’s one I made earlier” shirts. Circumference of David's M FF done up at the collar (i.e there is therefore overlap)= 45cm base of collar stand, 40cm at top.
David's neck fits his M FF well, his neck is 38cm. The ease between his neck and the top of the collar stand is 2cm. His neck is also only 1cm smaller than my dad's, as it stands my dad only needs 1cm more ease. But I decided to add 2cm to give him some more breathing space given this is an ongoing issue with his collars, best to err on the looser side. 42cm is the new size for my neck and collar stand pattern.
Actions= I need to make the collar 2cm longer and the neck hole 2cm longer.
PROBLEM: TOO LONG SLEEVES
Adjustments: narrow shoulders & short sleeves
My dad's arms are smaller than the RTW sleeves for his size. This was a big adjustment (in terms of impact) that I wanted to get right. The ideal length of sleeves for him, 65cm, turned out to be the exact length of the sleeves in the pattern (once I had added on the cuff length and subtracted seam allowances). However, the shoulders were wider than his, so this dropped shoulder would have made the sleeves a bit too long. I first thought I would simply take this length out in the sleeves simply because it’s an easy alteration, but later decided to work out how to do a proper shoulder adjustment to make them fit him where he actually needs it.
The pattern says that for my dad's shoulder width (41cm) he should be a M (40.6cm body measurement listed- close enough to 41cm for me), but the garment measurement for M is 46.5cm. Obviously ease is needed, but this seems to be quite a lot of ease and my mum thought it would be too wide. I looked again at David's size in comparison to his M FF shirt to see what the ease ratio was. David's shoulders are 45cm, his FF shoulder width was 46cm when measured. This does not include seam allowances as it is the finished garment size, but this gives me 1cm ease. The difference between my dad's size (41cm) and the size M (46.5cm) is 5.5cm. Therefore I need to decrease the shoulders by 4.5cm, to have 1cm ease. I decided to round down to 4cm.
Actions= Make the shoulders smaller to fit dad's shoulders (by 4cm total) and keep sleeve the same length.
PROBLEM: TOO WIDE CUFFS
Adjustment: narrow cuff
My dad told me his RTW shirt cuff- it's quite a fitted shirt- was too small at a 21cm circumference. The FF size M was too big however, at 25.5cm. He decided 23cm would be good for him.
I looked at sizing down on the cuff to see if a smaller size would be the right fit but XS was still too big. For me, the simplest way to alter the pattern piece was by using comparison of sizes. Size XS cuff is 1.3cm smaller than M (I measured this difference simply by measuring the paper pattern piece). I know M's circumference is 25.5cm, so XS must be 24.2cm circum. I want to reach 23cm circumference, so I should make the cuff another 1.5cm smaller than size XS which makes it 22.7cm circum (which is close enough to my 23cm for me).
With a narrower cuff, I needed a narrower sleeve hem to fit onto it.
Actions= draw a new, narrower cuff from the existing pattern, 1.5cm smaller than XS. Narrow the sleeve to fit the new narrow cuff (by 1.4cm on each side of the hem).
PROBLEM: TOO NARROW ACROSS TUMMY
Adjustment: full tummy
I wasn’t expecting to make this adjustment but came across it through checking my dad’s measurements against size M FF. My dad’s waist circumference is 98cm, size M FF garment waist circumference is 100cm. Based off the pattern’s measurements of the sizes it lists for M body and the M garment, there was 10cm ease. I therefore needed to add quite a bit of extra ease for it to fit well. I decided to keep it simple and at an extra 10cm rather than 8cm, making the garment’s waist circumference 110cm.
Actions= Full tummy adjustment- increase front by 5cm and back by 5cm.
How to make these adjustments?
I knew what needed to be fixed, but how do I go about doing that? It's not as simple as just shortening a sleeve (ironically, I should have done this too).
When I've made adjustments in the past I have mainly graded in-between sizes, but this simple technique wasn't going to be so easy with all my alterations here. I decided in the end to choose a “base size” of shirt that fit my dad across the chest (M) and make slash and spread/reduce alterations to this base pattern piece. I've never done so much tracing. Once I had made my adjustment to a traced pattern piece, I retraced over this to get a cleaner, more stable pattern and to true some of those messy lines (on the less messy pieces I left it to avoid unnecessary tracing).
BIG NECK ADJUSTMENT
adjustments to make x2:
Neck hole
Collar stand
Neck
Pattern pieces affected: front a, front b, yoke (3)
Method: simply extending original pattern lines; tracing with ruler.
Add on 0.5cm to each side of the neck opening where the shoulder seam starts which will add up to in 2cm extra circumference. This brought the line of the shoulder seam higher, so I needed to draw a new shoulder seam line (see photos).
Neckline circumference is now: 42cm
Collar
Pattern pieces affected: collar stand (1)
Method: No mods for me to make- simply tracing over a bigger size!
I used the multiple sizes of the pattern to help me with this one. Adding 2cm to size M's collar happened to be bang on size XL so I cut this one out- simple! I then needed to make this into a mandarin collar which I've done before, and followed this tutorial.
NARROW SHOULDERS & SHORT SLEEVES ADJUSTMENT
adjustments to make x2:
Shoulders
Sleeves
Shoulders
Pattern pieces affected: front a, front b, yoke (3)
Method: slash and reduce
Decrease size of shoulders by 2cm on the left and right of the front and back (so that the back width is in line with the front), which means altering 3 pattern pieces. I worried that decreasing by 4cm front and back would equal a 8cm decrease in shoulder circumference. I guess it does, but I wasn't measuring a 3d shoulder circumference, I was measuring the 2d width of the shoulders, therefore if they are narrow at the front of the body, they are also narrower at the back.
I’ll go into detail how I made this adjustment with slash and spread/reduce, the same principal applies to the other slashing alterations. I used these two tutorials, from Tilly and Helen.
Note: I overlapped my yoke onto the back piece as if the two pieces were one (like they will be when sewn), just to check if my NSA would impact the armscye of Back too. It only affected Yoke.
- Mark the halfway point on your shoulder seam and 1/3 of the way down on your armscye (measure it and divide by 3).
- Draw a straight line connecting these two marks.
- Draw another line perpendicular to this line, intersecting the corner of the shoulder.
- Cut down these lines as pictured, being careful not to snip all the way, snip up to the SA from the other side.
- Before moving the piece, mark on your shoulder seam by how much you want it to overlap by and reduce. I need my shoulder width in total reduced by 4cm, so for each front piece (there are 2 different pattern pieces) I will reduce by 2cm. Mark Xcm onwards from your shoulder centre point (in the direction of the CF). This will be the point you overlap to.
- For a narrow adjustment you will moving this triangle on its hinge to overlap it with the shoulder seam to reduce width (not spreading).
Sleeves
Pattern pieces affected: sleeve (1)
Method: simple shorten with ruler & original pattern piece.
I should have shortened the sleeves but I didn't. My measurements told me that the sleeve was the right length to begin with, but the shoulders were wider than my dad's, so the sleeves would be dropped. Therefore, if I fixed the wide shoulders I could bring the sleeves up to be the right length. I should have shortened the sleeves across the lengthen/shorten line by 9/8cm and retraced the pattern. Simple.
NARROW CUFF ADJUSTMENT
adjustments to make x2:
Sleeve
Cuff
Sleeve
Pattern pieces affected: sleeve (1)
Method: slash and reduce
My cuff is 1.5cm smaller than XS cuff, so I just needed to make my sleeve hem 1.5cm smaller than size XS. But as my base size is M, I've worked out the adjustment I have to make from this size, which is narrowing the hem of the sleeve by 2.8cm.
I traced the sleeve in size M. I cut a line straight up the middle to near the top of the sleeve cap, using the slash and spread method of cutting. At the hem, I measured 1.4cm either side of this central line (and where the split is) and marked. When you overlap your two sleeve sides over each other, overlap until these two marks are directly on top of each other. Measure the new hem to double check it’s the correct length.
Cuff
Pattern pieces affected: cuff & cuff interfacing (2)
Method: simple shorten with ruler & original pattern piece.
I drew a line on the cuff piece 1.5cm smaller than XS line to give myself the new size. To draw the new curve accurately, I traced over the old curve (which is the same shape and size for all sizes), matching it up with my new line.
FULL TUMMY ADJUSTMENT
adjustments to make x1:
Body
Body
Pattern pieces affected: front a, front b, back (3)
Method: slash and spread
Increased each front piece by 2.5cm, and the singular back piece by 5cm. I used this tutorial to help me know how to use slash and spread a bodice. What the tutorials don’t say is where to take the measurement that you want to increase by (when do you stop spreading). As I want there to be extra room around the waist I drew waistline onto my pattern piece and measured at this point where it met the gap from my slashed pieces (see photo). Just to be clear; for this one I didn’t measure the 2.5cm at the hem line like with the other slash and spreads, but at the waist.
It turned out quite tricky to redraw the curved hem line of the body pieces to get each side of split to smoothly line up, as once you have pivoted the slice, they are no longer level. What confused me even more was that front a and front b, despite having exactly the same full tummy adjustment, didn't look the same at the hem and actually didn't have the same sized gap created by the split. I don't understand how this happens. To re-draw my hem, I used the original pattern piece's hem to help get the right curve and traced over it, but I also had to use my ruler to smooth out the line and match up my two separated parts.
Fabric
I hadn't done all my adjustments when I ordered the fabric so I ordered more than the usual 1.5m, which is perfect for size M, because I wasn't sure how much space my altered pattern would take up. However, 2m was more than enough. My dad chose a grey linen from Merchant and Mills-- 185 linen in Silt Grey (his first choice actually sold out). I chose the buttons and went for khaki- Corozo 14mm buttons (although a bigger size than the pattern recommends, I've used these before and they worked fine). I always measure my button holes based on the buttons I'm using not on what the pattern recommends anyway, so as long as you have space to fit them on the placket you don't need to be so prescriptive about size.
Notes on the sew itself
I felt like most of the work was behind me with these adjustments. But I was a bit apprehensive that now I had my fabric cut out, would the adjustments actually work out when real pieces of fabric were sewn together? Yes, yes they did, I’m happy to say.
I used wonder tape a lot more than I have done in the past to help me, particularly with topstitching from the right side to attach a piece of the shirt that is loose on the wrong side like the cuff, the collar, as well as the placket. This is my fourth Fairfield, and I feel like I've nailed my preferred techniques of how to do different sections.
When I drafted my mandarin collar, I deliberately didn't thin it down like I did in David's. It's noticeably wider as a result and I think it works well.
For detailed videos where I go through the burrito method, using wonder tape on the sleeve placket and collar and how I do my button placement check out my Instagram story highlights.
Final adjustment post-sewing: shortening sleeves
This would be a far easier adjustment if I had known to make it pre-sewing, to the pattern itself. But it was once the shirt was made and my dad tried it on that I saw the sleeves were far too long. So long (9cm) that I must have not accounted for something somewhere, and I think it must have been the length of the cuffs, I don’t know what else could add on this much length.
With him wearing the shirt, I pinned the sleeves by overlapping the fabric over itself to work out how much of a reduction I needed, pinning them around the elbow. There was no way of escaping a visible seam so I decided it needed to be a feature and sit somewhere that makes sense on the arm. Shortening the sleeve at the shoulder seam would have been too complicated because of the dramatic decrease in size of the sleeve, and I think it would distort the sleeve shape the most. I also didn’t want to alter the length at the hem, as although I could remove the cuff, the sleeve placket really messes things up. This is okay for a small 1 inch reduction (I saw this was the alteration preferred online) but not for my 10cm.
My parents went home after spending a lovely Christmas day with them, and so I had to finish the alteration without my dad on hand. I measured the overlap of my sleeve where I had pinned it. One sleeve needed slightly more than the other.
1. I removed my pins and decided where I wanted my seam to be exactly. I drew on my line by measuring the distance from the cuff to make sure my line was going to be straight. This is certainly harder to do on a completed sleeve v a flat pattern piece. This was my cutting line, it ended up being 14” away from the first cuff seam. I cut the sleeve in half here.
2. Now remove the excess amount from the sleeve. I removed this from the sleeve cut offs, not from the sleeve left attached, because otherwise I would be moving my seam right up to the shoulder seam. I deliberately cut my sleeves off where I want my seam, so I have to remove the excess from my removed sleeves. Flat felled seams require 2.2cm SA so I removed 9cm-2.2cm on one sleeve and 8cm-2.2cm on the other.
3. Now that I've removed a chunk from the sleeve, the sleeve pieces will no longer fit perfectly back together because of the sleeve's narrowing trajectory. This is the faffy part of the alteration. I need to take in the seam allowance of the sleeve still attached to the body so that it narrows before its hem so that I can attach my narrower sleeve cut-offs.
I unpicked this flat felled seam to a few cm past the armscye seam to give me wriggle room. I only altered a small section of the seam; from directly after the armscye seam to the new hem.
Only unpick the first "part" of your flat felled seam, you don't need to do both seams. Once you have unpicked that, unfold the seam allowance that makes the fell and flatten the two pieces of fabric so you can access the original first seam. I then drew on my new seam line with chalk. I worked out how much I needed to bring it in by at the hem and then made a smooth a line as possible to the armscye seam. You want to have about 1cm at the end of the line where it meets the hem where you level off and go straight as oppose to the continued narrowing angle, this is because the flat felled seam you will be making takes up a bit more space than a normal seam.
4. Sew over your chalk to bring in this seam allowance and finish this flat felled seam again. Unpick the old seam so that you can neatly re-make the folded over seam allowance. Cut off the excess from this SA so you can fold it in half to meet the seam. Then fold this over again and press down. Stitch closed and this is your new, taken in, flat felled seam.
5. You're now prepped to do the actual alteration and sew the sleeve cut-offs back onto the body. Sew this like a normal flat felled seam. Remember to pay attention that you put your pieces wrong sides together, unlike me, so I ended up with an inside out cuff and had to do this step again.
Finally, I was finished with altering this shirt! The most altered garment I've ever made. It is very satisfying when alterations pay off, and baffling when they don't (here's looking at you sleeve length). This process has definitely made me eager to do more alterations with my next projects and take the time to figure them out. I have a whole new roll of tracing paper awaiting me.
The new elbow seam isn't even that noticeable.
Difference in sleeve length before and after:
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