Cutting, the Lined Yoke, and the Placket

A busserull goes together fast once it’s cut, because every piece is a rectangle. Take time over the cutting; the stripes will show any skew.

Cut

Prewash and press the fabric. Fold it with the stripes lined up, selvedges together, and square one end to a stripe. Then mark and cut:

• Body: one long piece folded at the shoulders (the Hadeland “poncho cut,” where the body is cut from one length of cloth) or separate front and back ¹.
• Yoke: two, a shell and a lining, stripes running the same way as the body ¹.
• Sleeves (2), gussets (2), collar band (2 halves or one folded strip), cuffs (2), placket and underplacket, a pocket, and the optional back belt.

Mark the center front and the bottom of the placket slash with chalk.

The lined yoke

The Tromsø museum shirt has a doubled yoke ². Folkwear’s construction encloses its seams ³:

1. Sew the yoke shell to the back and front at the shoulders, right sides together.
2. Press the lining’s long edges under 1/2 inch.
3. Lay the lining inside, covering the seams, and edge-stitch it down from the outside, or slipstitch by hand.
4. Stay-stitch the neck edge at 3/8 inch so it doesn’t stretch.

The placket

The opening at the neck is a slash with a placket. Folkwear’s method ³:

1. Cut the center-front slash to the marked depth.
2. Sew the narrow underplacket to one side and the wider placket to the other at 3/4 inch.
3. Fold each over the seam allowance to the inside and stitch down.
4. Overlap them at the bottom and box-stitch a rectangle with an X through both, to lock the end of the slash.

Museum shirts close the placket with 3 buttons; buttons were plain metal, bone, or shell, and later pewter ^{2 4}.

A pocket

Cut a rectangle with a 1-inch hem allowance at the top and 1/2 inch elsewhere. Hem the top, press the other edges under, and topstitch it to the left chest, matching the stripes to the body so it nearly disappears.

Seam finishes

Folkwear gives zigzag, serged, or turned-and-stitched edges for the seams ³. For a work shirt, a flat-felled seam, where one allowance is trimmed and the other folded over it and stitched flat, is the strongest option, though no museum record here confirms it was used on busserulls.

Try it

Sew a practice placket in a scrap first. It’s the one fiddly step in the shirt, and a clean box-stitch at the bottom is the sign of a well-made busserull.