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Refurbish collars and sleeves on mens dress shirts

SweetPeaTNT, member

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My husband was less than 6 months away from retirement and was in need of new work dress shirts for his office job.  He already had more than 30 dress shirts, but the collars and cuffs were well worn.  Predicting he will never wear any of these shirts again once he retired, I couldn't see the sense in purchasing more dress shirts at nearly $50.00 per shirt that late in the game, . 

I decided to refubish the shirts he already had, by removing the stitching only along the neck that holds the collar to the narrow band.  I turned the collar over so that the underside was now the top side, and the worn side was on the under side and never seen.  I resewed the collars down, using the top stitch needle marks as my top stitch guide line.  Voie' he now had 30 new collars, and it didn't cost me anything. 

For his long sleeve shirts that had the elbows or cuffs worn, I closed the sleeves on its crease and made certain the cuffs were matched even, then smoothed out the sleeves and pinned the front and back of the sleeves together above the worn spot.  Working with eash sleeve seperately, I measured from the cuff moving up the sleeve I placed a mark where the cutting line will be at the crease line, seam line, and the middle.  I used masking tape to connect the dots for the cutting line.  With a rotary cutter and ruler I cut the lower portion of the sleeves off.  I had enough of the sleeves to make a straight hem or create a built in cuff.  I could also open the cut off portion of the sleeves and cut a cuff that can be attached as a store bought shirt. 

My husband retired one and half years ago, and he has never put on any of his dress work shirts since, just as I predicted.  He took an early retirement with our income cut in half, so the savings was well worth my time to refurbish what he already had.   

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