Eight generators go into a shirt, and the interesting part is not any one of them. It is the six places where two pieces have to agree, of which the site closes three and leaves you the rest — including the hardest, where the sleeve meets the armhole.
Two caveats before you start, because both change what you draft. The bodice generator draws to the waist: it is the shirt's upper body, not its full length, and extending it to shirt length is something you do on paper. And the order below is not a suggestion — saving any piece clears the previous one out of your session, so a handoff only survives if the receiving piece is drafted immediately after its source.
Three rows pass a value that is genuinely the right one. The rest you carry. Draft the receiving piece straight after its source: saving anything in between clears the source from your session, and the receiving field is then simply not updated — it keeps its own saved or starting value, which looks perfectly plausible and is not yours.
| From | Value | Into | Field | How |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bodice | Calculated neckline length | Collar | Neckline circumference | Automatic |
| Patch pocket | Pocket width | Pocket flap | Width | Automatic |
| Sleeve | Wrist measurement | Cuff | Wrist circumference | Automatic |
| Bodice | Armhole length | Sleeve | Cap height and bicep | By hand — and this is the join that fails |
| Bodice | Centre front length | Front placket | Placket length | By hand |
| Your own choice | Seam allowance | All eight | Seam allowance | By hand — use one value everywhere |
Collar follows bodice, cuff follows sleeve, flap follows pocket — each receiving piece immediately after the one it reads from. Reorder these three pairs and the values stop arriving, because the session only holds one source at a time.
The shirt's upper body, drafted to the waist. It is the source of the neckline the collar needs and the armhole the sleeve has to match. For a shirt rather than a fitted blouse, start from the relaxed preset — and note that shirt length below the waist is not something this generator produces, so plan to extend the printed front and back yourself.
Open the generatorDraft this straight after the bodice. The neckline length arrives already filled in, and it is the figure the bodice actually calculated rather than a measurement you typed, which makes it the handoff on this page that needs the least from you. Stand and fall heights stay yours, and they are what separate a formal shirt from a soft one.
Open the generatorDrafted from its own width, length and button spacing; it does not read the bodice. Measure the centre front of your printed bodice — including whatever length you added below the waist — and enter that as the placket length.
Open the generatorThe piece to slow down on. It is drafted from bicep, wrist, arm length and cap height, and never sees the armhole you drew. Nothing checks that the cap will fit, so you do: see the next section before you cut anything.
Open the generatorDraft this immediately after the sleeve, before anything else is saved. The wrist arrives prefilled, and it is the right basis: a cuff is sized to the wrist it closes around, not to the sleeve above it. Add the ease you want on top — the default is 1 cm, which is close-fitting.
Open the generatorThe opening that lets the cuff undo. Its own opening length, tower and underlap widths. Nothing computes this length for you — the cuff's overlap is its own closure lap, not the depth the sleeve must open. Choose an opening that lets the cuff spread far enough for a hand, and check it against the printed cuff.
Open the generatorWidth, height, top hem and stitch offset, all its own. Position it on the printed bodice front rather than by the numbers — a chest pocket that measures correctly and sits wrong is still wrong.
Open the generatorDraft this straight after the pocket. The width arrives already calculated from the pocket's own face width, with the side extension added so the flap covers rather than matches it. The third of the three handoffs you can trust.
Open the generatorThree of these joins the site closes for you. These are the rest, in the order they will bite.
The join this project fails on. The bodice draws an armhole; the sleeve draws a cap from cap height and bicep, knowing nothing about it. Measure both curves on the printed pieces — the cap should run slightly longer than the armhole, by the ease you mean to distribute across the sleeve head. If it is shorter, the sleeve will not go in, and you find out at the machine.
These two are meant to disagree. The sleeve hem comes out wider than the part of the cuff that attaches to it — by about 0.4 cm at low sleeve ease and 4–5 cm at high — and that surplus is what becomes the pleat or gathers at the cuff. Measure both on paper: a difference of roughly half a centimetre to five is a pleat, more than that is too much to fold neatly, and a cuff wider than the sleeve hem means one of the two was drafted to the wrong wrist.
The bodice ends at the waist. A shirt does not. Decide how far below the waist the hem sits, extend the printed front and back by that amount, and shape the hem before you measure the placket — otherwise the placket is drafted to a length the finished shirt does not have.
Measure the extended bodice front from neckline to hem. Then check button spacing separately: the top and bottom offsets are set independently of the length, so a correct placket can still put a button through the collar stand.
No number in the cuff gives you this one. The cuff's overlap is the closure lap on the band itself, not the depth the sleeve has to open. Choose an opening that lets the cuff spread far enough for a hand to pass, then check it against the printed cuff on paper before cutting.
Eight generators, eight independent allowance settings, each with its own default. Pick one and use it throughout, or the collar stand will not match the neckline it was drafted from.
Generators size pieces, not yardage, and the bodice does not set the shirt's length — so these figures assume you have extended it to a normal shirt hem. Lay your own printed pieces out before buying.
Roughly 1.8–2.2 m for an adult long-sleeved shirt on 150 cm goods, including collar, cuffs, plackets and pocket. A check or a stripe needs noticeably more, because every piece has to be cut to match its neighbour across the seam.
Shirting cotton, poplin, oxford, chambray or a fine twill. Crisp cloth holds a collar stand upright and gives clean placket edges; something very soft will roll at the collar and ripple along the buttonholes.
Collar, collar stand, cuffs and both sides of the front placket. Use a lighter weight than feels right — shirt interfacing that is too firm makes a collar that stands away from the neck.
If the fabric has a repeat, decide before cutting where it falls on the pocket and the collar stand. A patch pocket cut to match the front it sits on is the detail that separates a home-made shirt from a made one.
The sewing order has nothing to do with the drafting order above. Shirts are assembled flat for as long as possible, because that is what keeps the topstitching straight.
Fuse the collar, stand, cuffs and placket interfacing while every piece is flat.
Build the front placket and attach the patch pocket to the front, both before any seam is closed.
Make up the collar and its stand as a unit, but do not attach it yet.
Join the shoulder seams — the first time the shirt becomes one piece.
Set the sleeves in flat, before the side seams are closed. This is why shirts are easier than jackets, and it is lost if you close the sides first.
Close the side and sleeve seams in one continuous pass from hem to cuff.
Sew the sleeve plackets, then the cuffs.
Attach the collar to the neckline, and the pocket flap above the pocket.
Buttonholes and buttons last, after a fitting — the placket is the only part still adjustable at this stage.
These come from assembling these eight pieces, rather than from shirtmaking in general.
The collar fitted because the site handed it a calculated length. The sleeve was handed nothing, and it has to meet the most demanding curve in the garment. Three joins of the six are closed for you; this one never is.
The cuff arrives at your wrist plus 1 cm, which buttons close to the arm — correct for a shirt, and only wearable because the placket lets it open. Cut the placket short and that same cuff becomes a sleeve you cannot get a hand through.
The bodice stops at the waist. If you measure the placket against it and then extend the shirt, the buttons run out above the hem.
The session holds one source at a time. Draft the collar after the bodice, the cuff after the sleeve, the flap after the pocket — anything saved in between means the field is never updated and keeps its own default. The collar sits at 42 cm whether or not your bodice was read, so a plausible number is no evidence the handoff worked.
The most likely silent failure on a project this size, and it shows up as pieces that are each correct and collectively wrong.