Anyone dart or take in the sides of their own shirts?

12 euros and 7 for darts chargues my taylor.

Ive done it. It is sewing 101.

Purchase "Shirtmaking" by David Coffin - if you're serious about doing it yourself this is a great step by step guide. I may at some point upload a video, but right now it's not in the top 100 of my to do list

Have you searched on youtube? I've found it to be a decent resource. Would be interested if someone else had a good resource, as well. Preferrably not darts.

I got the book here unread. I thought it was a bad purchase but might be not.

...tried looking for pinch & pin?



here's one for you.

Yup. I've done it on a few shirts, and will be doing it to a few more when I get around to it. You pin it in place, make sure it fits, sew, double check, then cut off the excess fabric and fell the seam. It's pretty easy to do a basic job, getting it perfect will be a bit harder, so do a few shirts that you don't care much about before you start altering the ones you really like. Haven't done darting, I've just taken in the sides, but I doubt it would be that hard.

Darting is much easier since it requires only one pass through the sewing machine for each dart. Making flat felled seams can get grueling.

I have done maybe a dozen of my shirts.

Fairly easy but time consuming if you want to do a professional job.

Start by pinning the shirt sideds the way you like it. I find also that if the sides need taking in so do the arms. After mark (with washable crayon) the pinned shirt at pin line.

Remove pins and completely open side seems upto arms or beyond if you want tighter arms and/or scye. Cut fabric 0.5 inch outside of mark. Resew using the same type of seem (seem that folds fabric on itself so that edges are completely hidden- and then stitched). This is actually a double row of stitches . You first start by folding one edge of the fabric over the other (other lies flat) then you stitch where all the shirt lies outside of the sewing machine. The second row of stitch is where you fold the side that previously lay flat -this stitch therefore goes through the resulting 4 layers of fabric. Tough to explain properly with words but make sure you examine the side seem when you cut it open at the beginning

You will probably have to redo the bottom edges as well so that they meet or curve properly.

i've done it to most of my dress shirts, because they are always billowy in the waist. i never flat fell the seam though because i'm a lazy fuck. cheap and easy way to make a cheap shirt fit great, imo. i remember there was a thread a while ago with some guy altering his own dress shirts, but i can't find it.

One tip: find a shirt that fits great and use it as a template. It'll simplify measuring.