Yoke

Turn a work shirt inside out and the yoke is exactly where you'd expect it — a separate panel sewn across the upper back instead of cut as one piece with the body. On a Dickies 574 or a Red Kap SP24, that seam typically sits 3 to 5 inches below the collar, finished with a flat-felled seam that holds up to years of lifting and reaching. Some shirts run a full-width panel; others split it with a center seam, common on Western snap shirts. Knit tees rarely carry this back panel — most substitute a set-in or raglan shoulder, which is why the construction shows up far more on wovens than on jersey.

For anyone speccing a back print, that seam is the practical ceiling: full-back designs need to sit below it, since anything crossing the line fights a doubled layer of fabric instead of a flat single surface. More than one shirt has come back from the press with plastisol cracked in a dead-straight line because the art ignored that four-layer buildup right where the panel meets the body.

When building a spec sheet, measure yoke depth from the high point of the shoulder rather than eyeballing it off the collar, and keep art at least half an inch clear of the seam so a squeegee or embroidery frame doesn't ride over it. Contrast-color or plaid panels on camp shirts also limit how a tone-on-tone design will actually read once sewn.

The mix-up we see constantly is treating this back seam and the shoulder seam as one line. The shoulder seam runs front to back over the arm; the yoke seam runs side to side across the back, often several inches lower, and it's that seam — not the shoulder — that actually limits your print.