Basic Adjustments for your Me-Mades & More!
We’ve all been there. You made (or thrifted) a garment and it’s just not giving you life as is. Here are some ideas for making it more you!
Shorten it
This is one of the easiest ways to update a garment! First decide where you would like the new hem to be by trying on the garment and looking in the mirror. If you are alone and you can’t decide on length without looking down, try adding a paperclip, wonderclip or clothespin to your measuring tape at a specified length, then hold it against you to see where the clip falls on your body. Then you can choose to move the pin up or down. If it is a shirt or dress, hold the measuring tape from your high shoulder point (where your neck meets your shoulder) and let the measuring tape drape over your chest. If it’s pants or a skirt, measure down from the waist of the garment. Ideally, you would hem pants or a skirt by measuring from the floor up, but when we’re on our own, we make do!
Once you’ve decided on your new hemmed length, mark it with a pin or chalk or a washable marker. Then measure down the garment (towards the existing hem) for your hem allowance. You get to be the boss here for whether the hem is a single or double fold and how deep you’d like it to be. Cut the garment at your new hem allowance length (do not cut on the final hem line!).
Now, fold up your hem, stitch it in place and wear your new thing!
Lengthen it with a contrast fabric
It can be both trickier and easier to add length to a garment. It’s tricky because you need to find a fabric you’d like as part of the garment, but it’s simpler than hemming.
First decide where you would like the new hem to be by trying on the garment and looking in the mirror. If you are alone and you can’t decide on length without looking down, try adding a paperclip, wonderclip or clothespin to your measuring tape at a specified length, then hold it against you to see where the clip falls on your body. Then you can choose to move the pin up or down. If it is a shirt or dress, hold the measuring tape from your high shoulder point (where your neck meets your shoulder) and let the measuring tape drape over your chest. If it’s pants or a skirt, measure down from the waist of the garment. Ideally, you would hem pants or a skirt by measuring from the floor up, but when we’re on our own, we make do!
If you’re going super contrast (chiffon cape on a denim vest or something) please disregard this. Otherwise, as best as you can, find another fabric that matches the colour/weight/weave/knit of the garment. Lay your garment flat on a solid surface (the floor or a large table both work well) and arrange the garment so the grainline is straight. Measure around the circumference of the bottom of the garment. Make sure to note where the side seams sit, they aren’t always halfway. For example, if it’s a 50” circumference of a shirt, maybe the front is 30” and the back is 20”, make sure your new pieces reflect that so the seams line up!
Hem the bottom of your new contrast and then attach it to the bottom of your garment. Don’t forget to finish that new seam!
Let out/add darts
Darts are one of the easiest ways to work with an existing garment if all you need are some tweaks to the fit. The purpose of darts is to release fabric to a larger point, so they always have a point and a larger opening. Here’s a great resource on different kinds of darts and where they occur on garments: Darts
First, put on the garment that’s too large inside out. Start pinching fabric out with your fingers and pinning it so you can measure. Once you are happy with the fit, take off the shirt and measure each intake point (widest part of the dart). Remember it’s folded so you’ll double it!
Mark each point relevant to the dart: the point and the legs. Then baste the darts closed along your lines and double check again in the mirror. If you’re happy, sew over your basting stitches and add the garment to your closet!
The one thing to note about adding single darts (shoulder, armhole, side seam, waist seam, etc.) is that because the dart legs extend into the seam allowance, sometimes it can be a bit tricky getting them to lay flat. You may need to increase your seam allowance a smidge to allow for the folding of the fabric after you’ve added a dart to a seam. This doesn’t apply for double ended darts.
If the garment is almost perfect and you just need a bit more room to move, check to see if there’s a dart you can remove! Often shirts have double ended darts in the back for shaping, and you’d be surprised how much even 1/2” can make in how a shirt feels.
Add shaping to side seams
Adding shaping to the side seams of a garment is fairly straight forward and can be done alone.
First start with putting on the garment inside out. Similar to the darts, starting pinching the fabric and pinning it in place until the garment falls or fits the way you’d like. Carefully take off the garment and mark all your pin locations with chalk. Mark new sewing lines so you know where to sew without a seam allowance. Baste your new seams and then try on again to see how it fits. If you’re happy with the fit, sew over your seamlines and you’re good to go!
If you’re still unhappy with how the garment fits, maybe consider adding darts to see if you can get more shaping that way. Or if it’s a pair of pants or a skirt, sometimes what you need is to add or remove a bit of fabric VERTICALLY instead of horizontally. You can often undo the waistband a bit and either remove or release more seam allowance to make the garment fit better.
NOTE: Sometimes you want to remove width from either the front or the back, but not both equally. Make sure to mark TWO lines, one on the wrong side of the front and one on the wrong side of the back. Pin those two lines together carefully and with accuracy so you get the fit you’d like!
Add fabric to side seams
If you have a ton of barely worn skinny jeans and you want to put them back in rotation with today’s style, grab some extra fabric from the thrift store, a thrifted pair of jeans in a contrast colour or even some lace if you’re feeling up to it.
Put on your pants and stand in front of the mirror. Decide where you’d like the fabric triangle to start and mark it with chalk on one side only. Take off your jeans and measure from the waistband down to your chalk mark and then mark the other side the same. Add a safety pin over each chalk mark through to the inside of the pants, you’ll want it to be seen on the inside as you are seam ripping. Undo the hems and seam rip up the side seams until you reach your safety pin.
Take a measuring tape and create a circle around your ankle to see how wide you would like the hem of your new jeans to be. Alternatively you can measure the hem of another pair of pants that you like. Say the new circumference is 20”. Now measure the jeans that you just seam-ripped. Say that’s 16 INCLUDING the 1/2” seam allowance on either side (so actually 15” of pants). You’ll want your new piece to measure 5” plus seam allowance at the bottom of the triangle. Now measure up your pants to see how tall the triangle needs to be, say it’s 30”. Please see the image below to see how this works:
Pin and baste your triangle in place, sewing each seam separately for the best join at the top of the triangle. Try them on and see how you like it. If you’re happy with it, sew over your basting, finish your seams and bartack over the top of the triangle to keep everything in place!
