Raglan Sleeve

Look at a baseball tee and the seam gives it away instantly as a raglan sleeve: a diagonal line running from the underarm up to the collar, replacing the shoulder seam entirely rather than meeting it. The sleeve and shoulder are cut as one piece, so there's no separate shoulder seam doing that job at all.

That diagonal line is what makes raglan construction the standard for two-tone baseball tees and 3/4-sleeve styles — contrast-color sleeve and body panels meet exactly along it, which is the whole design built into garments like the Next Level 6051 or Bella+Canvas 3200. The same seam also gives more shoulder mobility than a set-in construction, part of why raglan sleeves turn up on athletic and casual gear as much as fashion basics.

For anyone planning a print, that diagonal seam is the constraint to design around: it angles in toward the collar on both sides, leaving less flat width near the shoulders than a set-in-sleeve tee offers, and artwork that ignores it can end up crossing the seam or getting clipped. Pros keep primary graphics centered lower on the chest and save the sleeve panels themselves for smaller secondary marks.

A common misstep is dropping the same full-front file used on a set-in-sleeve shirt straight onto a raglan tee without adjustment. The identical design that fits cleanly on a set-in silhouette can crowd or overlap the raglan seam near the shoulders, so wide graphics usually need to be rescaled or recentered specifically for that seam line.