Transcription
I am SD and this is what our shirt looked like in the beginning and we've been in the process of measuring and taking in the side seams with a sewing machine. Which by the way took about five minutes. And now it looks like this BUT no no no no we are not done yet!
We're gonna throw some darts in the back of this bad boy. Now darts are incredible because they do a really good job of slimming the back of your shirt. Whereas slimming your shirt by just taking in the side seams it ends up leaving like this stupid poofy looking patch of fabric in the back!
Let's start with some sewing pins, a measuring tape, and an iron. We are starting with our shirt right side in instead of inside out because for this step we want to make sure that we like the measurements of these darts first. But yes we're gonna be putting the darts on the inside of the shirt not the outside.
Now, measure your shirt and see how far it is from shoulder to shoulder. Or actually more specifically like armpit seam to armpit seam. Now mine looks like it's about 24 inches or so. So what I'm actually gonna do is I'm gonna start my darts seven inches from each of these sides. And why seven inches you might ask? Well for me personally I found that having my darts start seven inches from that seam is what ends up giving me the best result. But your results might completely vary you might end up doing six inches you might end up doing let's say nine inches. So seven inches isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule.
Now I've got these two pins at the top of my shirt here. These are gonna be a, I'm gonna use these as placeholders. And these are gonna be the top of my dart. And then I'm gonna take my measuring tape and I'm actually gonna use it to make a line all the way down my shirt to make sure that this line is straight. And right down there BOOP! Okay so we've got our placeholder pins in here in all four corners there. And what you can do to make sure that they're actually the same length and the right length, what you can do is you could take your measuring tape and you can measure them. Mine are both 18 inches long. So that way you know if one comes out at 18 inches and the other one comes out of like 19 inches you're not gonna be walking around like Quasimodo.
And I'm actually gonna turn these placeholder pins so that they're actually going vertically with my shirt. I'll explain why. Now these placeholder pins what we're gonna do is we're gonna take both of them, and we're gonna pinch them and run them right between our fingers. And you're gonna take it like that and you're gonna pull it and you're gonna turn it on its side so that you've got a nice edge like that. It doesn't need to be ironed or anything but you want to make sure that you pinch and pull so that you get at least like a decent edge. A decent as just like, just like that.
Now we won our dart to be wider at the bottom of our shirt, and kind of start to taper off as it gets to the top so on my shirt we're gonna be putting about five pins in here not including these two placeholder pins. Now not including my placeholder pin down here these two pins at the bottom? They're both going to be a half an inch, this pin right here this is actually this is the middle of my dart here. But this is still gonna be a half an inch. And these next two pins up here? These are a quarter of an inch. This is where my taper is gonna start and then my top placeholder pin? That's all the way at the top here. So what we're gonna end up doing is we're really just gonna start to just make it disappear just make it go away right when we get to the top, just ease it out.
Try it on and just like the measuring video just kind of see how you feel about it. If it's too tight in your midsection or too loose then just kind of play around with the measurements of these pins and do what you feel is comfortable. This is what's gonna be comfortable for me in this shirt, but your mileage is going to completely vary! So these are not hard and fast rules by any means. Oh and don't be shocked! This will most likely be the very first time that you felt your shirt touching your skin in the front and in the back. It's gonna be like a little bit uncomfortable because you're used to the bagginess of a dress shirt. I know I was so as a heads up that's gonna happen.
Take it off, flip it inside out, and put your placeholder darts back in. Pinch that line that we did before like we've made before, and then I'll yearn it all down. Don't worry this part it's like super quick once you get it all down. You'll actually you'll end up flying through this. When you are done you want to ask yourself one question and one question only, do your darts look exactly like mine do? Yeah? Okay good then you're good. But if they don't you want to make sure that they look exactly like this because we're doing the exact same thing like we did in the measuring video, we're setting ourselves up for success later on.
Our sewing machine is gonna be right here, it's gonna go right over the edge. So these pins are all placed perfectly so we can just yank them all out as we go along. Normally what you would do is you would set yourself up for success on one side, but on the other side, this is the back side of my shirt here these pins are facing up. These pins would also be facing up but then we'd have our fabric just kind of all bunched up underneath our machine. Nuh uh, we get to skip all of that drama! We're just gonna pull them out, boom good! And now it is time to sew!
We're just putting a normal straight stitch in this guy just like we did in the side seams with the same settings. Back stitch the bottom of your dart and then kind of kind of go slow at first If you need too. If you got to kind of ease yourself into it. I've been doing this for a number of years now and I still kind of take my time on darts so if you're going slow? Don't worry it's all good. Once you get just past that middle pane in your dart where it's gonna start to taper, ease your way out and kind of be mindful of that placeholder pin because you want your dart to pretty much be gone by the time you get up there. And as you start to kind of approach that placeholder pin your dart? You're gonna be sewing right on the edge of your garment. And then when you back stitch up here? Back stitch like twice maybe three times because too many back stitches? It's gonna end up making it look really sloppy you're gonna have a kind of a dimple in the back of it. And you don't you don't want that. What some people do was they'll actually stop, they'll stop and they'll hand tie their darts at the top up here. But I don't I don't like to do that. And that is all there is to it folks we took this generic shirt from Target and made it look fantastic! These videos total were what like, 17 minutes? Which is about like how long this whole project will take you. I will see you on the other side SD out, deuces!