11 shirt - pattern cutting

A couple of months back I started work on producing a replica Matt Smith shirt.
To make it work I need to pull two aspects of the shirt together before I can make my first one.

Firstly, I needed to match the squiggly pattern design, which I have now done (see left), as well as the stripes for the cuffs.
You can read about that under Pattern Repeat and Screen-accurate Cuffs.

The other thing I need to do is sort out the pattern for the shirt itself.

Although I have a couple of Paul Smith shirts, each to a differing fit, my plan is to make a shirt that is much more of a classic size, rather than the over-tailored tight fit of the Paul Smith originals.

But instead of pattern trace my shirts, I am going to use a commercial pattern by Burba (see right) as a starting point.

It is a fairly straight forward shirt pattern with a number of permutations of style, but I will be making my own adaptions based on what I have learnt on my recent college course, as well as how the real Paul Smith shirts are cut.

I also have a cunning plan to make the cutting of the shirts a lot easier in the long term. I was originally going to have the fabric printed, then cut it out to my adapted pattern.
However, I have realized I need to make quite a few changes, so my plan is to make all those changes in a digital format, then directly apply the pattern shapes to the printed fabric itself.

First thing I need to do is scan the entire Burba pattern, which I have to do in A4 bits and patch together (see left).
To aid matching up, I spray-mounted it onto dot and cross paper first, giving me alignment reference. This also made it more robust for scanning.

I will not be using all the pieces. For example the collar comes in three styles (see on the left edge of the image), but none of them are to the right shape. This I will crib directly from my Paul Smith shirts.

I then retouched to remove the background paper colour so it was easier to trace in Illustrator (see above).

The pattern contains a range of sizings, from S to XXL, all of which are superimposed on top of each other. You can see this in the sleeve shape.

To start with I will trace the L size and make sure the pattern works. Adapting it for the other sizes will then be a very simple job.


Anyway, after tracing just the pattern pieces I need, and making the necessary adjustments and adaptions along the way, I can then impose them together.
I need to remember to duplicate and flip certain pieces, such as the sleeves, and mirror others such as the back, only half of which comes in the pattern.

The outlines are then transfered into Photoshop and used as a mask to outline the shapes I need (see left).

I have filled the spaces available on this first run with spare sleeve plackets.

Due to a size limit on files for Spoonflower, I had to break the pattern across two sheets: one with the body of the shirt and the collar (see above); the other with the sleeves and cuffs (see below).

As a back-up insurance policy, I also made up a single yard of plain pattern repeat, in case part of my design does not work as intended. I can then redesign it and cut it from the spare fabric before feeding the revisions back to my master pattern.

It’s then just a matter of placing the order and waiting for the fabric to arrive.

Well, all that was a few weeks back and this weekend the package arrived (see below).
A quick inspection and everything looks to have worked just as I planned. All I need to do now is cut it out, and make up my first working prototype.

Very exciting stuff!

11 shirt - Screen accurate cuff modifications

As the broadcast of the first Matt Smith episode drew nearer, we started to get more publicity images of Matt in costume.

The only image til now that showed the cuffs on the burgundy shirt had the jacket over the top, so it was only possible to see the edge of the cuff and two stripes burgundy around it (see right). At this point it was thought that the sleeve straps had been butchered and adapted to modify the cuffs, which at the time made sense.

Later, through a reader of my blog, I found another variant of the shirt in the blue, which appeared to have a lot of the modifications needed already done – and the cuffs were pre-striped into the bargain.

The stripes, however, covered all of the cuff, not just a couple around the edge (see left).

This had caused a flurry in the forums, as it started to look like I had acquired a more likely Paul Smith shirt compared to what had been found to date.

A clue to confirm this then appeared a few weeks later in the 3-D trailer, where it was very briefly possible to see that the blue shirt had more than just a couple of stripes on it (see below).

My new shirt was looking more and more like the real thing. But we still had not seen all of the cuffs on the burgundy shirt. Could this be fully striped too, like my blue shirt?

Then finally, as the broadcast of the series drew even closer still, one particular image published in The Sunday Telegraph Magazine caught my attention (see left). It shows Matt wearing the shirt, but without the tweed jacket, so for the first time we got to clearly see the cuffs, and yes, they were just like the blue shirt I had!

There was then some criticism of those who had done the sleeve strap modification, saying it was all wrong – which in truth it was. However, the straps are not that long, and even when pressed out fully, they only gave enough fabric to add two stripes around the cuffs. It would never have been possible to add stripes to the entire cuff using this method.

This calls for a plan B.

So, I have a fully striped cuff in the form of my blue shirt, and I have already scanned and found the pattern repeat of the shirt body, so all I need to do is the same for the cuff. Spoonflower will do the rest (bar the sewing!)

It’s not quite possible to flatten the entire cuff out to scan it, but I can get most of it in there (see right).
Despite what you might think, scanning fabric never gives an accurate colour result, plus the weave shows through the image, so this will need to be retouched out. The process of doing this will change the colour further, so I am not even trying to retain the colour that is there – at this stage I am just after the design and shapes that make the pattern.

What I am aiming for is a mono artwork, which I can then colour match to the burgundy and the blue as needed (see above).

One annoying quirk of the Paul Smith design is that for some reason the squiggles between the stripes on the straps and cuffs are actually a much darker colour, almost black, so I need to mask these off and colour them separately.
It’s a bit time consuming, but worth the effort.

Next I need to pattern trace the blue cuff so I have a template for the artwork. This way I can make sure I have enough length of stripes to cover the cuff.

Finally I can colourize the mono artwork to the burgundy and blue (see left).

The cuff’s buttonholes complicate things somewhat, so the plan is to not bother even trying to retain the existing cuffs – I will instead create and entirely new replacement cuff which I will swap for the existing one.

My artwork done, it’s now just remains to order the Spoonflower fabric (see below) and wait for it to arrive.

Check back soon to see how my new cuffs look once the fabric arrives.

If you have one of the standard Paul Smith shirts and would like to have your cuffs replaced with more screen-accurate ones, please get in touch with me for a details.

Email me at tennantcoat@me.com.

11 Shirt - pattern repeat

I mentioned in my previous post that as well as modifying my own Paul Smith PS shirt, I have also been looking into making reproductions of the Matt Smith shirt for those who missed out on the opportunity to grab one when they were available.

I explained how I had been working on replicating the fabric design using Spoonflower, but quickly skipped to the end so I could show the swatch samples I had created for anyone interested.

I promised to write about how I had gotten to that point, and here it is.

After the success of the Seven Hatband Hankies, I knew it was entirely possible to scan existing fabric and recreate it using the likes of Spoonflower. As I wrote in the Seven Costume Blog, the hankies had their own challenge, not helped by the original being distorted and twisted out of true when it was scanned. However, patching it together was highly successful, when I had worked out the right technique.

For the Matt Smith shirt, I started by doing a good quality high resolution scan of the front of the shirt, making sure to keep the fabric as flat and taught as possible (see left).

When opened in Photoshop I made sure it was accurately square and rotated it as needed.

Despite the apparent randomness of the design, there must be an established pattern repeat in the fabric. The question was to find it.

I picked on a squiggle that was distinctive, and copied an area around it; pasted it back on top, and made it transparent; I could then slide it up and down the fabric until it phased with its repeat above and below.
This gave me horizontal guides for the repeat.

I did the same for sideways and found the repeat in that direction. I then placed guides here too, isolating the area of the repeat (see right).
I allowed myself some overlap to remain which I will fade out so the joins won’t show, but then deleted the rest of the  scanned image.


Next was to check the repeat was working, so I copied the area inside the guides and replicated it surrounding the image, creating my own repeat. (see left).

At this point it was critical to correct any discrepancy of alignment or repeat. I spent some time until I was happy.

The scan I had been working with included the background colour of the design and showed the weave of the fabric itself. I retouched the isolated repeat to eliminate this, before reducing it to a simple black and white high contrast linework image.
I have done it this way so that I can apply a consistent colour across the design.

Before applying the colour, I built a three-by-three grid which ‘proves’ the repeat (see right), ready to step-and-repeat it enough times to cover my entire fabric.

Usually you would only need to provide the isolated area to Spoonflower to do the step-and-repeat online, however, I have a clever little trick planned, so I need to produce a single image to cover the entire area of the print run.

Having done all the careful preparation, this was a relatively simple process and I soon had a three-yard length of pattern repeat ready for the next step (see left).

In the meantime though, I had some space on the side of a reprint of the Seven Hankies, so I added some swatch samples, which I have made available for sale (see below).

If you would like a Eleven Shirt fabric swatch, please PayPal US$20 to tennantcoat@me.com, remembering to include your postal address and a note that you want the swatch.

Look out for the next stage of my process to replicate the shirt.