Aloha Surf Shirt (Japanese Pattern Book “Shirt” by Sunday and Sons)

In my quest to find the right Hawaiian shirt pattern I came across this pattern book by Sunday and Sons called “Shirt”. The book contains 4 basic patterns entitled “Sport”, “Dress”, “Military”, and “Work”. Each basic pattern contains 4 variations giving you 16 types of shirts to fulfill any aspect of your wardrobe. The “Sport” shirt pattern contains a variation for this Aloha shirt which I have completed here. Overall, I felt like this pattern exceeded my expectations for design, fit, and finish. To start my review I will just say that this entire book is in Japanese however, they provide enough translations (measurements, titles, and sizes) and clear diagrams to make this doable even if you don’t know Japanese. There were only a few Japanese symbols that I needed to study and match on other pages to figure out a few sizing charts. Also, the patterns run on the small size. I usually wear medium and am a 38 Regular coat size, but in this pattern I was large and the shirt is fitted. Another aspect of working with these patterns is that you have to trace them all out on tissue paper and add seam allowances as they do not include them in the pattern. The pattern recommends 0.6 cm seam allowances but next time I will probably do a standard 5/8 inch to give a little more fabric to work with for seam finishes. For this shirt I used a cotton/polyester blend fabric that I sewed together using the reverse side of the print to mute the tones as all traditional Hawaiian shirts are done. The shirt came together nicely and the diagrams were easy to follow. The fit is slim but I have full range of movement and no tight spots in the shoulders or back. The only issue I came across was some improvisations I had to make for finishing the inside of the collar but this was minor. I will definitely use this pattern for my next Aloha shirt and I am excited to begin making other shirts out of this book as well, all of which look very promising!