Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts

Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts

This is the second post of the series on Hawaiian shirts which is appropriately called Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts. Assuming you got past designing and printing your fabric outlined in phase one and have received your new Hawaiian print fabric, its time to take out the cutting saw and cut it all up. So its off to fabric storage to get a few roles of your favorite design and deliver them to the cutting room.

Now while it all sounds easy so far, you are reaching a critical stage in making Hawaiian shirts. This is where the tires meet the pavement and any mistakes can and will completely ruin your new Hawaiian fabric.

So before you do anything more you need to inspect your Hawaiian shirt pattern. At Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts we use commercial grade patterns graded by a professional pattern maker.

These are not the Hawaiian shirt patterns you see in Wal-Mart. Patterns do degrade so you need to make sure that they do not show any signs of damage, as well as makeing sure no pieces are missing.

Make sure you store your patterns in a dry place because the pattern paper will absorb moisture and shrink significantly.

The next step setting up for the cut. Once you have loaded the roll of fabric on the rollers and you have the table prepped it time to lay down the layers. Depending on quantity needed we cut anywhere from 18 to 100 layers at a time. I want to take a moment to give credit where credit is due, and thats to the cutters who have a thankless job. We all agree that sewing makes or breaks a shirt but its our personal opinion that the Hawaiian shirts develop their distinct personalities on the cutting tables.

At the point of setting the patterns and creating the marker, a good fabric cutter in San Diego will take into consideration how the completed piece will look when sewn together. Where you position the pattern piece is crucial to achieving the desired effect in the finished product.

Ok we now have the fabric setup and the marker is completed and weighted and or clamped, looks like we are ready to rock. Depending on the amount of layers you can either use a rotary saw or my personal favorite, a super sharp 8” knife saw. At this point is the men are separated from the boyz. Start following the lines and cut out every required piece, remember that a single mistake like a deep or off marker cut will make the entire layer unusable, were talking total scrap.

When you have completed your cut you tie the size together and move on to the next cut, and you continue to cut until your back starts to hurt, which usually sets in pretty quickly. That basically sums up cutting, we hope you found it informative enough to make the determination that you don’t want to do it yourself. Our next post in the series will be sewing Hawaiian shirts, the final yet most critical phase in making a Hawaiian shirt.

Mahalo!