​Welcome to the first sewing day of the London Shirt Sew Along. Today we are going to tackle the Front and Back of the shirt. This involves staystitching the necklines, creating the center front hems and sewing the front to the back at the shoulder seams. Let's get sewing! 

Begin by staystitching the neck edge of the FRONT (1). Stitch along the seamline or just a stitch width inside the seam allowance. 

Press 1ʺ to the wrong side of the center front. Using a pressing template will help you get an even fold. You can easily make your own templates using a manila file folder. For this step I used a strip 1ʺ by the length of the folder. 

 Use your template to fold and press the center front again, creating a 1ʺ- wide double fold hem. Pin, stitch and press. 

Staystitch the neck of the BACK (2). Why all the staystitching? It is an important step that will keep the curved neck areas from stretching out. It also acts as a guideline for clipping and joining the curved edge to other edges, most notably the collar which we will work on in the next Sew Along post. 

​With right sides together, pin and stitch the Front to the Back at the shoulder. Serge finish the seam and press towards back. 

Join us for the next Sew Along post where we will be attaching the collar and sleeves. Happy sewing!