Hello.
This is Mr. Linen.
When buying a ready-to-wear shirt, what do you do if the neck and shoulders fit perfectly, but the sleeves are too long?
I imagine many people simply move the button to make the cuff opening narrower, preventing the sleeve from sliding down over the hand.
This method saves you from taking the shirt to a tailor and paying to have the sleeves shortened, and you can do it yourself at home for free.
The other day, I bought this Western shirt, but the sleeves were much too long.
The cuff opening was too loose, causing the sleeve to slide down as far as the base of my fingers.
With a regular shirt, you can simply move the button, but a Western shirt uses snap buttons, which makes the alteration much more difficult for someone without the proper tools or experience.
The options seemed to be either taking it to a tailor and having the snap button moved, or shortening the sleeves so that they would no longer slide down.
Shortening the sleeves would presumably cost more, so I took the shirt to a tailor and asked if they could move the snap buttons.
I was told that the female side of the snap button could be moved, but doing so would leave a hole where the female snap had originally been attached.
Unlike an ordinary button, snap buttons are attached using metal hardware that is pressed through the fabric, so that makes sense.
However, leaving the hole exposed worried me. With repeated washing, the fabric could gradually fray and the hole could become larger. Also, while the hole would be hidden when the snap was closed, it would look rather unattractive whenever the snap was undone.
So the tailor suggested another solution: instead of moving the female snap, add an additional one.
Even on ready-to-wear shirts, you sometimes see two ordinary buttons placed side by side at the cuff so that the shirt can accommodate people with either larger or smaller wrists.
The idea is to do exactly the same thing with snap buttons.
I had actually tried this method myself once before, but the result didn’t look very neat. This time, I decided to have a professional do it, even if it meant spending a little money.
There are two things to consider here.
First, you need to find a female snap that is the same size as the original.
That means finding a suitable snap at a fabric or sewing-supply store. If the size is slightly off, the snap may be too loose to stay closed or too tight to fasten properly.
I assumed that snap buttons would mostly follow standardized sizes, but surprisingly, that isn’t necessarily the case.
In my case, I was lucky because the tailor happened to have one in stock that fit perfectly.
The other issue is the arrangement of the buttons.
Western shirts usually have two or three snap buttons at the cuff rather than just one.
On my shirt, the snaps were arranged in a triangle like this. Since I only needed the outermost snap to fasten the cuff tightly enough, adding just one was sufficient.
I could have added all three snaps, but that would have made the cuff look overly crowded, and it would also have increased the cost, so I decided against it.
Some Western shirts have the snaps arranged vertically rather than in a triangle. In that case, I think adding just the outermost snap would also work, because once the cuff is fastened, the additional snap would be hidden.
The price will vary depending on the tailor, but at the shop I used, it cost ¥400 (about US$2.70) per cuff, or ¥800 (about US$5.40) for both sleeves.
That is considerably cheaper than having the sleeves shortened, so if the sleeves of your Western shirt are too long, this may be worth trying.
That’s all for today.
Thank you for reading.
コメント