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Discovered! 505
Odd Enterprises

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How to Make
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Small Business
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You Can Own
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In most families that sort of message relayed to mother would herald the arrival of an appliance salesman or an insurance agent.

But not in the George Williams home in Pueblo, Colorado, where Mrs. Williams can be almost certain that the caller will be a customer, another of the increasing number of ranchers, rodeo performers or just plain people who have heard about Mrs. Williams' hobby of making western shirts for sale.

Three years ago when Mrs. Williams was unable to find the kind of western shirt she wanted to wear as a member of the Pueblo Saddle Club, she decided to make her own. An expert seamstress, she had no trouble making the kind of tight-fitting shirt she desired. Then she made one for Mr. Williams, who is also an enthusiastic horseman.

"Say, I like those shirts," George Mills of Pueblo, nationally-known rodeo clown, told Mrs. Williams. "How about making me one?"

Mrs. Williams agreed, made the shirt and promptly found herself in the midst of a very profitable hobby that has grown tremendously in three years.

MRS. WILLIAMS' finished shirts, well-made and well-fitted, worn by enthusiastic customers, have brought her all the buyers she can possibly serve.

"Customers just keep coming," slender dark-haired Mrs. Williams says smiling. "But the family helps me. The girls help with the shirts, and everyone pitches in on doing the housework."

Daughters Barbara, 15, Martha, 13, and Denise, 11, assist in taking down measurements when customers first come to order a shirt. They also help press the shirts and work the machine that inserts the snaps with which Mrs. Williams finishes all her shirts.

Those snaps, by the way, are an innovation of Mrs. Williams and something of which she is very proud. Instead of using buttons and spending hours making conventional buttonholes, Mrs. Williams uses snaps of the type ordinarily used in leather purses.

It took two years to locate a machine to insert the snaps. The one Mrs. Williams now has is a hand press type with which she can finish shirts with plain metallic, pearl button or plastic topped snaps. The latter come in a variety of colors, all of which Mrs. Williams keeps on hand, stored in a small chest with divided drawers which Mr. Williams had made for his wife.

THE FIRST step in shirt making involves selecting the fabric, Mrs. Williams points out. Many customers buy their own yard goods and take it to Mrs. Williams. Others, men particularly, like to have her shop for them, and still others want Mrs. Williams to accompany them on their shopping expeditions. "It's especially fun helping the young boys shop," Mrs. Williams says. "You'd be surprised how observing and discriminating they are."

Boys and young men are the most particular customers, too, she hastens to point out. "Their shirts must fit just so, and they are the vainest of all about appearance."

After the material is selected, Mrs. Williams measures her customer. Down in a large ledger book under the customer's name go the exact sizes of neck, chest, waist, length of shirt (including shirt-tail), wrist, pocket and sleeve length. While Mrs. Williams uses a measuring tape, one of the girls enters the necessary information in the ledger book.

Then comes the cutting out. Mrs. Williams uses commercial shirt patterns as her base, alters them in accordance with usual dressmaking procedure to make them just a bit bigger or just a bit smaller in the proper places. The real difference comes in the yokes, pockets and sleeve plackets. Patterns for these are designed and altered by Mrs. Williams.

Western shirts differ from ordinary men's dress or sports shirts in five respects, Mrs. Williams asserts. They have deep fancy back yokes, some scalloped, some pointed in several places. They are form fitting, and they have long sleeve plackets cut nearly to the elbow, two breast pockets with snap-fastened flaps and collars to be worn with short western ties,

IN THE beginning, Mrs. Williams used an ordinary table and ordinary shears for cutting. But as her volume of orders increased she needed more professional equipment. Now she has a pair of electric scissors and a specially-built four-by-six-foot plywood cutting board that fits on top of an old library table.

"My cutting and pressing room is my basement," she says, "and we keep this out all the time." "This" includes the cutting board, an ordinary ironing board and a steam iron. The girls are in charge of pressing the shirts after they are done. From cutting board to sewing machine requires an intermediate step of hand basting, the only sewing operation that Mrs. Williams does by hand. Assembling the shirt she follows the instructions that come with commercial patterns, adding a few little touches of her own that she has learned by experience.

Seams are the usual flat-felled ones used in tailoring men's shirts. Care is essential in all sewing, Mrs. Williams points out, especially in the case of fabrics like silk jersey, a material popular with Mrs. Williams' customers, which "simply can't be ripped out and re-sewn."

Because of her present volume of business, Mrs. Williams' ordinary sewing machine has been replaced by a heavy-duty dressmaker type machine which occupies a corner of the Williams dining room.

The final step in making of most shirts comes when the sewn and pressed product goes to the snap machine, also in the dining room, where two of the girls insert the snaps. In addition to closings down the front of each shirt, snaps are also used on each of the breast pockets and on the wrists where two or three close the cuff and an additional one fastens the high-split placket.

CUSTOMERS FURNISH their own materials, and Mrs. Williams charges $5 to make plain metallic-snapped shirts and $6.50 to $7.50 for fancier pearl or plastic buttoned ones. Figuring all costs including the snaps, the labor and thread involved and investment in equipment, Mrs. Williams estimates that her own clear profit is approximately $2 per shirt. Shirts actually cost customers from $7.50 for the cotton kind (counting Mrs. Williams' charge and the cost of the material) on up. Some customers want embroidery or felt applique work, which Mrs. William gladly provides, but which naturally costs more. The embroidered kind run about $25, Mrs. Williams estimates.

Most of Mrs. Williams' customers want fine tailoring rather than elaborate decorations and depend on Mrs. Williams' work and colorful prints, plaids or vividly bright solid shades for the real western look.

However, Mrs. Williams provides ornamentation when it's wanted, and at the moment she's thinking of trying textile painting as an experimental decorative method. She's also interested in trying her hand at beading a shirt—creating a design with many small glass beads.

"Wild colored shirts are particularly popular with Coloradoans," Mrs. Williams says. "The wildest shirt I ever made was for a boy last spring. It was brown seersucker with red strawberries and yellow flowers. The girls didn't like it," she adds, "but the boy and I did."

To save time and effort in shirt-making, Mrs. Williams cuts one day and sews the next. With this setup she can turn out five shirts in two days.

Her prize customer is Leo Kramer of Big Timber, Montana, nationally-known rodeo manager, who orders a dozen shirts, each one different in color and style, at a time. Once Kramer ordered eighteen shirts at the same time. Mrs. Williams made each of different materials with variations in yokes and pockets.

THE LARGEST single order that Mrs. Williams has filled was for sixty identical shirts for the Kit Carson, Colorado, band. Frequently she is asked to make matching shirts for husband and wife and sometimes for an entire family.

In addition to shirts she makes western-style pants and the trick riding outfits with full-sleeved satin blouses and tight bell-bottomed trousers which women rodeo performers wear. Mostly, though, her work has been with shirts. She estimates that she has made approximately 3,000 shirts in the three years she has been engaged in her hobby.

Something of which she is particularly proud is the fact that she has made the complete western outfits for the Colorado State Fair queens the past several years. Each queen had an entirely different outfit, appliqued with different felt designs including stars, willow leaves and hearts.

Anyone who can sew well could develop a similar hobby, Mrs. Williams asserts. In addition to sewing skill, western shirt making requires a flair for originality in varying the patterns to please different customers—and experience, lots of experience, she asserts.

Mrs. Williams has taught others to make shirts, and daughter Barbara, for one, has already made three shirts for herself in accordance with her mother's instructions.

After the first shirt is made, all that's necessary is to have the owner wear it around in riding or rodeo circles a few times. Then the customers start coming for one "like the shirt you made for so-and-so."

SOME OF Mrs. Williams' shirts are worn by rodeo performers who appear from the Pendleton Roundup in Oregon, to the rodeo season finale at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Customers from many other states besides Colorado have heard of Mrs. Williams' work through rodeo friends and have come to have shirts made, stopping on their way through Pueblo or coming to Mrs. Williams' home while they are in the city attending the State Fair, an outstanding rodeo event.

Mrs. Williams is so enthusiastic about her hobby that she is now planning on enlarging it and turning it into a full-time business. She and her husband have discussed building a shop over the family garage in a year or so. Mrs. Williams even has a name chosen—"The Shirt Shop."