The Beast's shirt

The ‘muscle’ means that our Beast now has a chest measurement of 50” (now that’s a huge weight gain for our actress) so the shirt was made to go over this.

We need 2 shirts the same, one for Beast and one for the Prince but in different sizes so of course they need to be more or less identical.  There was obviously only one way to go....tunic from rectangle pattern.  This time round I added a collar and the sleeves were made from another rectangle (or two, the Beast does have two arms after all).

So following the ‘tunic from a rectangle’ directions I made one shirt body for the Beast.  The fabric is 60” wide so I was able to fold and cut a length of 30” to give me plenty of fabric for the shirt’s width.

I then folded the centre fronts to form where the fastening will be, before cutting the shoulder, neck and arm shaping.  I sewed straight down to form an easy placket, then cut the shaping and sewed the shoulders together.

Here is a pic of the shirt body before sleeves or the collar are added;

By measuring around the neck edge you get the length of the collar, in this case it is 24”, I folded the fabric double before cutting out the collar shape and used the fold as the collar edge.  The ends were sewn together and pressed.

Then one side of the collar was pinned to the outside edge of the shirt right sides together. 

I then sewed that side in place, turned to the inside and folded over the other edge of the collar, pinned and sewed it together on the inside of the shirt.  

The collar is then sitting nicely on the neck edge ready to be pressed.

Onto the sleeves, which are just a rectangle stitched into a tube and stitched onto the armscye (which you need to get the measurement of to ensure your sleeve is wide enough to fit into it!).  Of course it doesn't matter if your sleeve is wider than the armscye (the hole your sleeve fits into) as you can always make some gathers in it to make it fit...its not so easy to make it bigger so err on the side of no caution.  I have an arm length measurement for my Beastly lady of 25”, so yet again I am going to add some extra length for the seam allowance and even more as I want a nice bit of frilly flounce at the end.

I had a wonderful moment of realising that my sleeves were going to be 30” by 30” on my 60” width material, don't you love it when things work out like that?

I overlocked the edges of the sleeve and sewed a hem on one edge which is now officially the end of the sleeve.  Then sewed a channel 4” from the end to slip elastic through and form the frill.  The sleeve was also sewn to form it into the tube shape.

I would like to point out that my costumes are NOT for close inspection and the 15 foot rule applies...if you can’t see it from 15 foot away it doesn't matter.  However, there is no reason you couldn’t use these directions for a shirt for everyday wear, it is just a case of taking more time ensuring every measurement is correct and everything is sewn together neatly.  For the purposes of three days at the end of January, it is really not worth my while spending a long time on something like a shirt and I call these costumes my ‘cut and shut’ jobs!

So, back to the shirt.  The sleeves were put into the armscye and sewn up, a bit of elastic pulled through the channels and a bit of lace round the ends of the cuffs and it was nearly finished.  The only decision to be made was Velcro or poppers and I went with poppers as Velcro and wadding are in love with each other and over attracted, not a good thing for a quick change!

Shirt done....next step is the Beasts jacket.