Easy Sewing Alterations for Beginners: Take In a Dress, Repair an Armpit Tear, Blind Hem Pants (Part 1)

Summary

A night of making things fit! I shorten a pair of shorts for my husband, repair a blown-out armpit on a vintage Pink Floyd tee, take in a too-big dress (whose seams were dry rotted anyway), nip in the waist of my favorite stretchy shorts, and blind hem some pants. As always, this is just how I do it, not the one true way.

• Armpit tears along the seam are an easy fix: line it back up, pin, and overcast stitch from before the hole to after it.
• To take in a dress, pin a consistent amount (about 3/4 in per seam) and taper back into the original seam so you don't get puckering.
• Check existing darts first. Sometimes you can pinch them deeper instead of re-doing whole seams.
• Wonder Clips are hit or miss for holding darts in place; pins are more reliable.

FAQ

How do you fix a tear in the armpit seam?

Line the seam back up, pin it, and run an overcast stitch from just before the hole to just after it.

How do you take in a dress?

Pin the same amount on each seam (I did about 3/4 in), then taper back into the original seam so it doesn't pucker.

Can I take in a dress without redoing the side seams?

Sometimes. Check the darts first. You can often just pinch them deeper.

Are Wonder Clips or pins better for darts?

Pins. Wonder Clips are hit or miss for holding darts in place.

Transcript

Hi. Hello. You've got time to waste and I'm here to waste it. Hi. Hello. I am going to make some things today. And by make some things, I mean make some things fit today. We're going to do this dress. Uh but first, I need to do these shorts for my husband. He said make them a little longer than the last ones I did. So, the last ones came to here. These are going to come to here. Snippity snoop. Turn the scissors the right way.

Okay, got my first cut. So, it's easy enough. I just took a pair of sweatpants. I folded them in half. I pulled the crotch around. I laid it flat and lined it up with the crotch on these, which are folded in half, laid flat, and now I should just cut straight along. A more type A person would pin this into place. They would use a ruler. They would measure. I'll grab a ruler just to just to make you feel better. But I'm not going to use it. I'm going to use it for just one sec. I'm going to cut my start and my end shorts done. Easy. I'm not going to hem these or anything cuz they don't fray. Just going to give them a good little tug.

What's next? This shirt. A vintage Pink Floyd on a broco tug. It's an XL. Good fade. My guess is it's going to have pit tears. A nice blown out armpit. So, now we're going to do a pit repair. Turn this inside out. And we really examine it up close. Let's take a look, shall we? Okay, so this armpit did us a huge favor and it tore very neatly right along the seam, which means this will be an extraordinarily simple fix. Theoretically, the first thing I'm going to do is try and get it all lined back up so that I can pin it into place and sew it right along this original line here. Got my cute little pins from my sweet friend Ty.

This will get pulled up to here and And on this side, see, it's a little bit stretched out, but it's going to just get kind of bunched back in here right along that seam line. All right. And then we're going to take it over to the sewing machine and we're going to do a little overcast stitch right along that edge. in there. Good. And get this sewn right back the way it should be.

This one is such a small area that I am going to switch to an overlock, but I'm not even going to bother changing the foot or anything. We're just going to leave her where she is. I'm going to pull up my bobin thread. Make sure everything is going as it should be. Where you at? Bobin thread. There it is. Okay. Pull those toward the back. So, I am tucking the sleeve into itself. I'm throwing another yarn somewhere. The hell? Jesus Christ, dude. I swear to God. Hi. It's like nothing ever happened. We've got this little baby pinned into place. And we have the seam here. We've got the little edge here. And we're gonna slide that under and make sure that all of the frays and all the loose ends are overlapping. We don't want to miss anything. And we're going to start a little bit before the hole.

My pins fell out on me, which makes it a little bit trickier. Not sure why they did that. That was very weird pins. And I'm going to pull this up and over. And I want to make sure that it's nice and smooth there at the end so I don't get any weird dips. And by dips, you'll know what I mean when I show you if it does it. Okay. And then we extend this stitch a little bit. Show you. So you see this stitch starts before the hole and it ends after the hole to make sure it's all included. Now, it was super duper frayed right around that edge. So, I just want to make sure everything looks good. Pretty good. Can cut this one. Look at our Where am I going? This way. So, that's the inside. And then when we flip it, I got to remember which sleeve it was. It was this one. So, you'll see we have this little like tiny little kind of pucker mark. right here. And now when I press it, most of that will go away. But if I wanted to avoid that all together, I would just go back in from the inside and kind of do a better job pinching and get that to pinch where it lines up nice and even. So I am going to do that because I want it to look good. We're going to leave it alone.

And there she is. Pretty much good as new. There's still like a tiny dip, but it's in the crease of your armpit. No one's ever going to see it. It's fine. We're done here. Okay. So, I have this dress, and I love this dress, except it's a little bit too big for me. So, I'm going to show you how to make it smaller. Also, plot twist. The seams are dry rot. So, it's already making my job that much easier. Uh, I'm going to show you what I do to make clothes that are too big fit. Stick around. Okay, so you put your dress on inside out or whatever your garment is, and you start kind of looking at your seams, figuring out what would be a good seam to take something out of to make this fit better. So, like with this sleeve here, if I were to take out some of this side seam, I would have like a weird thing happening here, right? Because this would come out and then I'd be like, "Oh no, what do I do? How do I cut this new seam?" But if I'm able to pull in, it kind of pulls the shoulder up and it kind of So, I feel like this and this are good places to take in from because it'll suddenly also pull in the sides for me. So, I'm going to grab my pins and I'm just going to I'm just going to start pinning. What I want to do mostly is make sure that I'm going through both layers in the same places that I will be sewing. So, like right here.

And this is all well and good, but at the end before you start sewing, you're going to want to like grade these seams. And I'll explain that better hopefully when I get there and I don't forget. But just remember that whole grading the seam thing for later. Okay. So here, and this ends up being about like 3/4 of an inch on each side. So, it's probably about an inch and a half total that's coming out of here. And I want to make sure I'm doing the same exact thing on this side.

And as always, no matter how I show you to do this, please know that it's probably not the right way. It's just the way that I do it. And if you Google it, you will find a hundred different people doing it at least 93 different ways and all of them are right in their own way. Do not at me, bro. Do not shame me.

Okay. So then it's hard to tell where it's actually too loose because of this back seam here. If I bring in I definitely have a little bit more. I can come in here. Yeah, about like that. I think that I'm probably going to just take it in about an inch and a half the whole way down on both of these seams and then like blend them out at the end. And then I'm going to do just the front ones first and see if that's enough. And then if I need to go back in or if it fits weird, I can do the back ones after. I'm hoping to be very lazy here. got you through to here. And this will be about where I start letting it kind of come back like uh so I'm going to like for instance if this is one inch over then we're going to want to be about 3/4 then a half then zero. You really want to like blend it in to the existing seam. I'll show you more as I go. Okay. I'm noticing already this is fitting. Is that is I missing a pin here? Probably. Yeah, that was exactly what that was. Okay, that immediately feels better. I think that it could still probably end up losing some in here, too. But we will cross that bridge when we get to it. So, next we're going to shoot these down. Take it off. This is the hard part. It's where my pins. Great. Great. Killing it. So, you'll see the pins aren't doing a great job being in a perfectly straight line here. But I'm gonna get out my chalk and I'm gonna just kind of trace along to make sure that I'm bringing it in in the right places. This is like a a man holding his fish trophy. I'll be right back and I'll show you what I mean. Okay, got my chalk and now I am just kind of lightly drawing out about where each of those pins are. Remembering that I said I was taking it in about a 3/4 of an inch all the way down and then blending it slowly into the original seam. And that'll prevent like puckering and weird just like weird fabric shit. So get that all done and then we'll take it over to the machine to do a little zoop which I'll probably tell you in a second after this voice over is done. Just kidding. The first thing that I'm going to do is actually repair that split seam where the uh thread had dry rotted. So, I just I'm just lining it up and all the way down and uh putting it back the way it was before. And now I am going along those lines that I drew out to take in the seams. I am doing my best to hold the original seam like totally straight. And that way I'm able to just right along there and follow the line. Uh, now I'm flipping it over, getting it to the other side, and doing the exact same thing. Look, I even gave you a new camera angle so you can see better. Just sewing right along that chalk line, dropping pins everywhere as I go. I think I even lose a nail at some point in this process. You see me hiding my index finger. That's cuz the nail came off. All right. All set. Oh, we're lopsided.

That's not really better. Whatever. Okay. So, we have sewn all along the inside of the existing seams. And I also stitched back together the part that was falling apart. Now, let's see if we fit. Definitely fits a lot better, but I think we might have some goofiness up here. We can check.

Okay, this is actually not bad. Okay, this dress is just so fun. The way it changes colors. Um, all right. I feel like it fits much better now with just those two. It could be better in here, but um, that would require more work than I'm willing to put in tonight. I would need to like go along here, close this up smaller. It's just it's more than I'm going to commit to, but I I feel good. I feel good with this one. Okay, so next I need to do a pair of shorts. Sorry, I'm just looking at how cool these colors look when it moves. Okay, wait. Actually, I just realized something. So, the back shoulders where they're too big already have darts. So, I could just go inside this dart, pinch further and longer and and then it would fit better. Am I going to do that right now? No. But I like knowing that I could. So, next I have these shorts. And when I got these, they were my very favorite and I was actually a little bit too powerful for them. But now when I put them on, okay, they kind of they get grippy to the shorts underneath. Um, they don't fit like they did, right? Like they still come up really high. I like that. But they're too big all over. Look at a dumpy butt. Oh, sad little dumpy butt. So, they just um they're also very stretchy. And because of that, they need to be snugger. So, same thing as with the others. We're going to take them off and turn them inside out. And we're going to see where the construction is and what we can do with that. So, right away, this is the back side with these darts here, right?

Okay. Yeah, that's the booty pocket. And I don't really want them to be tighter than the legs down here. Just up here. So, I think I have a few options. I could come in the side and kind of grade this inward making like a dart. So, oh, but then we have this side which is the zipper. So, you can't really grade it. So, then my only real options are here and here. So, what I'm going to do is get Better than pins. Lips. Maybe. We'll see if they're better this time. It's very hit or miss. So, I'm just going to clip everything that's extra. Hoping that they're going to stay in place. A lot of dark that needs to happen. Okay, then this side. This is riveting tele. Trying very hard not to move my clips. Not one of those stayed. Not one of those stayed where they were. Are you kidding me right now? He took them off and they all went back to where they were except for this little guy right here. He's a real MVP. Heck. Okay. Well, what we can do is we can seam rip this and then work on these folds again. Okay. So, I'm just seam ripping around the outside of these darts. We'll figure out what we're doing later with those. You've ripped this. them. Putting these back on actual pins this time. Maybe they will help. Okay. Well, we'll work that out in a minute. And then work these out. So, you really want to get it like centered. This is so much easier if you have some. But if you don't, you can still make it work. Maybe maybe you can still make it work. Jesus Christ. Okay, we're just going to have to base the other side off of it because I'm getting frustrated. You know what? We're going to wing this shit. Okay, let's see how this goes. Sometimes when I'm sewing, it just suddenly puts me in [laughter] the worst fucking mood I've ever been in in my life. I just stabbed myself with a pin and it like wasn't even that hard, but it like sent me over the edge. I'm not sure how much of this is going to be cut.

So, to recap, I have um seam ripped this waistband right around the area that the darts are just to make it a little bit easier for me to go in there and pinch it how I need to be uh pinched for following along the other dart. Now, I did not seam rip it quite far enough, so I'm just going to take a couple more little stabs out of there. And I have more or less marked where I need it to be. So right now the dart goes here and I need it like it's like a full inch over on this side and then it tapers out. Now you also really want to pay attention to how they did the original darts. And you'll see, let's see, maybe you will, that it goes right to the very edge and then they left this little train here. So I'm going to try to mimic exactly that. And my dart's going to have to come down a bit further to get it where I need it hopefully. I'm not tracing it. I'm not doing any additional pinning. This is what we're doing and we're going to hope for the fucking best. Okay, let us commence. These look like actually they look like very short straight stitches and not zigzagged at all. They need to be a little bit zigzaggy, but I'm just going to do what it does. Maybe you neio. Okay. Okay. Okay. So far so good. So my plan is to just keep this moving straight into soap completely parallel to that line until it brings me to the natural end. And I think that's going to do right for us. Let's find out. I think that one might have gone down a lot further than the last one. No, it looks like they go to about the same spot. Perfect. We're going to flip them. We're going to pull these toward the outside. Summon these guys. Uhoh. What is that? What have I done here? Okay, we're just gonna we're just gonna beep beep that right back up.

Redo this waistband, which won't be any issue at all. But before I sew that band back on, I want to go ahead and try them on and make sure they actually fit first. And yep, okay, they fit. Now, let's see. Do I want to fuck with this? I'm feeling very good about these right about now. Just need to reattach my waistband and then maybe fix uh the length a little bit. And then I could also cut this surplus fabric off, but I'm not going to. At least not right now. This is this waistband.

Okay. Well, it was gone for a while there. Trying to figure out what they what method they used here. Oh, so what I just did was I sewed the inside to it. And now I'm going to flip it and sew the top of the waistband down. Okay. So, we're going to stitch on this waistband. We're going to try them on. We're going to add the button back. Then, we're going to try them on again and make sure they fit. I feel pretty good about it. There's a little bit of like pinching or puckering there, but fuck it. We're moving on. We got to do these pants. Now, we're going to do a blind hem to even out the edges so that they fit me when I wear flats and not just my thick ass Gucci boots. I I forgot to record some of this, but I'm just going to hem these. Um, I made them for the fashion show. I made them too long. I left a lot of it intact. And I'm just going to do a blind hem all the way around to even it out. Tada. Okay. I actually have an entire tutorial on doing blind hems. So, I'm going to link that here. Uh, I'm too tired in this to even try to explain to you what I'm doing. Tada. Done. Okay, I think we're going to call it quits for the night. And I'll sew a few more things up in the morning to make them smaller, too. Hi. Hello. Some things have come up. Stay tuned for part two and I will have more alteration advice. Thank you. I'm so sorry. All right. I love you. Goodbye.

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