This should inspire everyone to enter Myra's Free Pattern Giveaway contest for the vintage men's shirt pattern.
I was feeling selfish spending all of my sewing time on myself, so I made the boy a shirt. I picked out this pattern ($5 on eBay).
When I asked him what size shirt he wore, he said 15"/40". This was a 15.5"/40". Good. Then I got it and he stated that "well, the shirts in my closet are all size Medium/15, but that was when I was lifting weights a lot and had a thick neck and I was bigger. I've lost 15lbs of muscle since then and now I am more like a 14"/38".
Fortunately I was able to copy the measurements off of his favorite Banana Republic shirt to get the fit right.
I did make one modification to this class pattern - it called for gathers where the yoke meets the back. The boy does not like gathers, and given a choice prefers a flat seam to pleats. So I drafted the yoke and back pattern slightly different in size from the original proportions (by copying the widths directly from his RTW shirt) and it worked perfectly.
I thought this would be harder than sewing women's garments but it many ways it was easier. I did make a muslin out of an old sheet to make sure I could pull this off. That was a big help. I love how despite this being an early 1960s pattern it looks like he bought it new this week. I am trying to convince him to let me make him another one using the cotton version of my Target Tennis Dress fabric (it's available in both a poly stretch AND cotton stretch shirting) but he is not too keen on the idea of a mod retro print shirt.
Yet.
More pics on the blog.