The Shirtmaking Workbook: Pattern, Design, and Construction Resources, by David Page Coffin. Creative Publishing International, 2015

This is an exceptional book on designing and creating shirts. It assumes you know basic sewing; this is not a book about sewing. Coffin deconstructs shirts into five different ‘blocks’ or basic shapes: dress shirt, sport shirt, knit shirt, folk shirt, and shirt jacket. He also shows various collars-so many collars!-, cuffs and pockets with glorious details. By adding these collars & cuffs to the various blocks, you have nearly limitless options in your shirt- any of which, of course, can be used in a women’s blouse just as well.

He does show some sewing tips: sewing without pins (wow), stitching seams, how to fold and put together a placket, and the best way to turn a point- essential for nice looking collars. Along the way are example shirts, designer pages and what they’ve made, how to copy an existing shirt, and pages of helpful resources: books, classes, software, and websites. There is also bonus material- mainly patterns- that will be available online but as of today (6/22/2015) only some of it seems to be working.

This is one of those books that I know I’ll turn to again and again. While not a tailoring book, the author does give a lot of tips. One thing that fascinated me was how the Duke of Windsor’s collars were made- obviously of the highest quality but a method that looks incomplete from the wrong side! It has a purpose, of course- to reduce bulk. It’s things like that that make this book so interesting. 

<iframe style="width:120px;height:240px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=tf_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=mancatman-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=1589238265&asins=1589238265&linkId=AKFKEZTLXTBTEZQ2&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true">
</iframe>

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. 

I received this book free from the Amazon Vine program. 

Neither of these things influenced my review.