A Baby Shirt

Baby Linen, 1843

SHIRTS - The material is cambric, lawn, or cotton-cloth; and the quantity necessary to make twelve shirts, according to the following directions, is six yards and ten nails. The depth of the shirt, which is to be cut down the selvage, is five and a half nails ; and the length, which is to be cut in the width, is eleven nails You cut off the bodies, and, folding one down the middle, fold it again, so as to have the quarters equally divided. You then cut a slit for the arm-holes, one and a half nails deep, down the two quarter-doubles, from which, have three quarters of a nail for the shoulder space, and slit down the back and front flaps one nail. You cut the sleeves down the selvage, making them in length one and a quarter nails, and two and a half nails in width; the gusset is exactly one nail, and the sleeve is to be set in, and fulled in very small gathers at the top. All the seams must be as flat as possible, and as narrow as they can be made.

The bottom of the shirt, if not a selvage, must be hemmed neatly with a narrow hem, as must also the side and the flaps. In hemming the latter, care must be taken, so to do it, that when turned down, the hem may appear the right side out. The shoulders are to be neatly seamed and felled, and the sleeves hemmed, and two strings of a proper length are to be sewn on to the corners of the flap in front.

The accompanying plate shows a very pretty pattern. It is composed of fine lawn frilled with French cambric.The epaulet is hemmed to turn over the sleeve, and frilled, and the seam on the shoulder and sleeve finished with hem-stitch.