I have been hanging out to make a shirt with a chevron yoke, but was anxious about the process. Then I found the excellent tutorial by Pam from Off the cuff and I was off and running.

I used a lovely striped shirting from Tessuti, and chevroned (yes, that is a word) the yoke (outside only) and pocket. This worked so well. You can see from below that I did the chevroning (also a word), separately and then cut the pieces out of the fabric, rather than cutting the pieces out and then trying to join them together. This is the “off the cuff” method and it works so well. My pattern drafting looks pretty dodgy, but it seems to work out ok…

The shirt turned out to be perfect, with precise alignment of stripes.

I also used the “off the cuff” method of doing the cuff plackets and they also worked brilliantly. Please note: the plackets should have a button on them, but Mark doesn’t like this, so he has gaping cuff plackets!

A close up of the pocket:

I took the shirt in about 1.5 cms on each side, including the sleeves. I must say that the fit is much better and I will modify the pattern this way in the future.

Just as a matter of interest, I have this remnant of interfacing in my stash that I have been using for what seems like years (including in this shirt). It cost $2 and the shop I bought it from closed down in 1999, and I would have bought it a long time before then. I don’t know how big the original piece was, but I still have more than 2 metres of it, so a bit of a bargain, huh?

The details:

Pattern is Kwik Sew 3422

Fabric is striped cotton shirting from Tessuti