Machine Sewn 18th Century Shirt Video (and some hand sewing links)

I've finally remade that shirt tutorial I wrote back in early 2020! That post has been the one I've linked people to for years when they asked about shirt construction, but it was never meant to be a complete tutorial, and my technique has improved somewhat since then. 

I made a video version and a written version, which I've wanted to do for a long time. Both are longer and more thorough than the original blog post, but the video has a bit more information. I don't usually do both, but for this one I really wanted to be thorough.

The written version turned out very long, so it's in 3 parts, not including this post.

Intro, Video, & Hand Sewing Links - You are here!

Tutorial part 1 - Pattern & Cutting 

Tutorial part 2 - Construction 

Tutorial part 3 - Ruffles 

They aren't quite as painfully detailed as the video version, simply because you can cram more information into a video, but still pretty good. (And I can come back and edit them to add anything I may have forgotten to put in the video, or to add better photos of some bits.)

If you are hand sewing your shirt, don't use the machine sewing methods! The most efficient way to do something by hand is usually very different from the most efficient way to do it by machine!

Burnley & Trowbridge have a series of videos on how to hand sew an 18th century shirt, but they don't have a playlist for them, so I made an unlisted playlist with those videos and added some more to the end, for ruffles and buttons. 

They do their shirt in quite a different order from how I like to do mine, and I really would encourage people to put the sleeve on first and then finish that seam and close up the side & sleeve seam afterwards.
I know they're basing their construction off of what they've observed on extant garments, but I speculate that the sleeve order in that case is probably because if a bunch of people in an 18th century workshop are making a shirt then it's more efficient for one person to work on the body, and 2 to work on the sleeves, and then you can sew them together at the latest possible step and have it done more quickly. But if you're one person making one shirt by yourself, it's much easier to put the sleeves on first!

I do my hand sewn shirts in the same order as I do my machine sewn ones, but you may prefer a different order.

For hand sewn ruffles, here's their video on rolled hems, and on rolled whip gathers. Rolled whip gathers are so, so nice. Time consuming, but such a beautifully fine and perfect way to attach ruffles!

They can go right on the edge of a narrow hem, and can be removed without any little bits of fabric left behind. You can use this method for sewing on lace too.

Some more advice for hand sewing shirts:

• Use a backstitch for the construction seams and a whipstitch for the felling. Make sure the underside of the backstitch (with the longer, more untidy threads) is on the side you will cover with the felling. Most of the shirt is just backstitch and whipstitch.
• For gathers, press the un-gathered edge and lap it over the gathered one and do tiny whipstitches, putting one whipstitch through each gather. It will look so nice. In my opinion this is the most noticeable difference between hand and machine sewn shirts.
• The collar and wristbands are folded wrong sides together and have the edges whipstitched, rather than being sewed right sides together and turned, like I did in the machine version.
• The shoulder & side seam gussets are whipstitched on too.
• The shoulder strips are apparently backstitched on, a little ways in from the folded edges?? I think this is weird and I don't like it, but I'm sure they must have had a reason for doing it that way.
• On some earlier portraits you can see that the bosom ruffle doesn't break in the middle, and is in one long continuous strip around the bottom of the slit! This is much easier to do by hand than it would be by machine.
• There are a lot of different ways various things are done on various extant shirts. There are multiple things on my shirts pinterest board that I find weird and confusing, and I think you should do whatever makes the most sense to you without worrying too much about it.