Sewing Hawaiian Shirts

Sewing Hawaiian Shirts

Ok its now time to talk about sewing Hawaiian shirts and the crown jewels of our business, the seamstresses.

Sewing is one of the most pampered departments in our company, and for good reason.

Allow us to say that we are blessed to have some of the best seamstresses in the apparel industry.

Elaborating that a good seamstress will sew a Hawaiian shirt like she is going to wear it herself and rarely if ever misses a deadline or makes a mistake that effects the quality of product going to the consumer. All of our employees have a say (and authority) in every phase of construction, especially sewing. If sewing takes issue with the cut product, it’s the end of the road for that batch, no questions asked. That’s just one of the many quality control policies we have in effect.

So how do they assemble and sew a Hawaiian shirt? Believe it or not, it’s a visual that requires a lot of skill and hand eye coordination. Of course an industrial sewing machine helps and not to leave out button machines, 4 thread serger and miscellaneous supplies of the trade.

When the cut Hawaiian shirts get to sewing, the seamstress will dismantle the pack and separate the sections. Then the interfacing is pressed on and sewn and placed back in the rotation. The next step is what separates a fine quality Hawaiian shirt from the imports, that being a shirt pocket that is perfectly matched to the pattern and grain. Matching pockets is nothing short of an art, you can either do it or you can not. With some of the ladies having over 25 years of experience in commercial and niche sewing we assure you that ours are of unparallel quality.

Once the pocked has been matched and sewn into the panel the remaining pieces are then assembled and serged where required. Serging builds in a lot of strength in high stress areas like a sleeve opening etc. The final phase is attaching the buttons. We do not use just any button, we use oversize buttons made from genuine coconut shells. While we have seen everything from wood to plastic buttons on many shirts we think you can not beat the old school look that a coconut button adds to the shirt closure. The final leg of the shirts journey is to pressing and a final stop at quality control where each sewn shirt is inspected and then packaged and labeled.

Ok there you have it, the genesis of Wave Shoppe Hawaiian shirts. I closing we would like to mention that we will always cut and sew our shirts in Hawaii and the USA, our shirts have been inspected by some of the top people in the industry and the high quality of construction is always at the top of the list. We are proud to be an American company.

Below are the 3 posts in this series, feel free to link to the posts for reference:

Hawaiian Shirts, from Conception to the Consumer

Patterns and Cutting Hawaiian Shirts

Sewing Hawaiian Shirts

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!

Hawaiian Shirts, from Conception to the Consumer

Hawaiian shirts, from conception to the consumer.

Welcome to the first in a series of posts outlining how Hawaiian shirts are made.

While the consumer only sees the completed shirt, there are a lot of processes that must first occur. So lets jump right in with coming up with a design and a brief overview of that process. I am one of those people that map out everything in my head and rarely put anything on paper myself and I place a lot of emphasis on how our customers will perceive the design on the fabric.

Remember that you have maintain your “Aloha identity” while at the same time satisfying your customers needs.

Once I have the overall Hawaiian design in mind, I will contact our Hawaiian design artist and she will start the process of extracting the information. The first renditions for our Hawaiian designs come to us as sketches, once the general concept is nailed down we discuss the repeat and then move on to coloring. Shown on this page is a print that is in its 4th iteration with partial colorizing, but it should be enough to illustrate how its done.

Eventually we make it to the point where we have the design approved and locked and ready to go to the printer. But that’s just one leg of the long journey, while you may have print ready Hawaiian artwork, you are far from having cut ready Hawaiian print fabric. The next step involves what is called strike-offs, whereas the design is sent overseas for screen setup and once those are prepared, the printer will run off about 1 yard of printed fabric, that is what’s referred to as the strike-off. Once that has been ran we will receive digital images for review, if all looks good the strike-off is then sent back to us for approval or rejection.

Due to variations in dye lots you may or may not get the actual colors you originally anticipated, so seeing the physical strike-offs are mandatory. Unfortunately some strike-offs do get rejected and its back to square one. But given the fact that you didn’t print and essentially ruin 3000 yards of Hawaiian fabric, it’s a minor setback.

Ok so now we are 8 to 10 weeks into the process, assuming the colors and repeat are what you were looking for its time to sign off on the strike offs and begin printing. Well you hope they will start right away but that’s not always the case. In many countries you have to deal with things like Chinese New Years whereas the plants shut down for a month and in some instances the local governments will shutdown entire industrial power grids to conserve electricity. Typically the entire process of going from design to printed Hawaiian fabric is about 3 months but you should also be prepared to wait as long as 5 months, and that does not factor in shipping which is usually by sea.

We hope you found this informative and come back to read our next post, where we will be discussing Hawaiian shirt patterns and cutting.

Mahalo,

The crew at Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts

Announcing Shirts for Group Sales

Were already 1 month into the New Year and that much closer to summer, that means its time to start thinking about Hawaiian parties and Luaus. There are certainly hard economic times ahead for some sectors, but we would like to help you out by offering Hawaiian shirts for group sales at a price that fits even the tightest party budgets.

How does $19.50 per shirt with 8 lively Hawaiian designs to choose from sound?

Right now there is a good supply of shirts available and in stock, but the quantities run low during peak, so we suggest that you plan your group party early. Below are a few sample designs that are available for group sales.

Blue is very popular because it is a color that appeals to men and women.

Red is also a great choice and you cant go wrong with a traditional Hawaiian design.