How to sew (a shirt)
If you are new to sewing and have no idea how to sew, you’ve come to the right place. In this short tutorial I’m going to show you how to sew a shirt. It’s really not as difficult as it seems.
This particular shirt that I’m going to show you how to sew is a kid size shirt, made from a pattern I had previously enlarged for a six year old girl. The first step to sew a shirt is to sew the facing, if it has facing. If there is no facing, then you can go ahead and just sew the shirt, but in this case, there is facing. I laid the facing out inside out as shown in the picture and sewed it around the edges, only leaving the bottom open. I then turned it the right way round, ironed and stay stitched the edges. The following three images will show how I sewed this part of the shirt.
When you know how to sew a shirt this part is quite easy, but when you’ve never done this before, it can be quite complicated to understand. It’s simple. It gets sewn the wrong way around and then turned over.
I proceeded to do the same with the back part and facing.
The next thing you need to know about how to sew a shirt is to fit the two panels together along with the bottom part of the shirt. I proceeded to insert the pleats into the bottom part (see my post for how to sew pleats) of the shirt (top of the bottom panel) and once again, with the wrong sides together, sewed the two pieces together. The image below will show you how that was done. Edge to edge, so that it’s aligned properly.
You will see that when you flip up the top part of the shirt, the front part of the shirt would look complete. I sewed the back and front together, inside out. When you turn it around, you do not see the seams that you’ve sewn.
The important thing in learning how to sew a shirt or any other garment is that you need to always remember that most often, about 99% of the time, sewing is done back to front to hide the hems. Nobody buys clothes in the shop that looks like it’s made inside out. The hems are always on the inside.
After having sewn together everything, the shirt is turned around and completed. The only thing left was to add one button at the back, which you can check out in my article on how to sew a button hole.
I hope this has shown you how to sew a shirt in a couple of easy steps. It’s really easy and with a bit of practice, you can learn how to sew a shirt and almost anything else that you want to!
How to sew a shirt – tips:
As always, I have explained how to sew a shirt. But I find that just reading about it does not always help. One has to also practice how to sew a shirt to do it properly. So my suggestion would be to go to your local fabric store, get some off cuts for a cheap price and an old pattern and start practicing how to sew a shirt.
When you choose a practice pattern, don’t choose a button up fancy shirt but more something like a tshirt. It’s easier to practice how to sew a shirt with a plain t shirt type of pattern than a fancy pattern. Once you get the hang of how to sew a shirt, you can move on to more complicated projects.
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