Plaid linen shirt, completed and modeled!

Meet Ed, our dear neighbors Irma and John's son-in-law, who's visiting this week with his wife from California.

I'm making two shirts for him, and this is the first, in a fine handkerchief-weight plaid linen.

Ed wears a Size 44 shirt (the 44 refers to his chest measurement), which corresponds to a 16-1/2" neck.  Ed's neck is 17-1/2 inch, so I had to widen the neck (by lowering it in front in Ed's case) to add 1" to the circumference of the neck band and collar.  This worked out beautifully.

Here's Ed in the shirt yesterday before I added the collar.  You can see that it comes up too high, even accounting for a 3/8" seam allowance, the allowance I generally use when making collars.  The white pinhead just below the brown stripes is the approximate point to which I lowered the neckline.



I used a contrasting floral linen for the inside cuffs and collar stand.  The darker blue in the floral is a perfect match for the blue stripe in the plaid.







A big thank you to my readers who recommended using spray starch to prevent excessive shifting of my plaid.  I don't know how I would have successfully cut the collar and stand without it.  The stripes on the outside collar are perfectly symmetrical.







Ed has the squarest shoulders I've ever encountered -- perfect for the cut of this shirt.

Before collar and cuffs.

After adding collar and cuffs.

I'll be making one more shirt for Ed, who leaves NYC on Sunday.  Not sure I can complete it by then, but I hope to get started.

A big thank you to Ed for agreeing to be photographed for this blog.  My clients so far have been very good sports!

Have a  great day, everybody!