Tents Are for Camping

This is the white shirt I bought at Walmart a couple of weeks ago. I liked the fabric, the fit not so much. But it's actually pretty well made for a Walmart shirt so I brought it home to think about.

I never buy clothes thinking I can "fix" them, but I decided to just go ahead and fix this one today so I would actually wear it. I need a plain white shirt. Yes, I could make it myself but I don't have any white shirt fabric in the stash (really!) and, like I mentioned, I like *this* fabric. It's a very soft stretch cotton with a subtle woven-in stripe. It took a couple of hours, but that's still faster than making one from scratch. It turned out pretty well, so I'm glad I broke my own rule.

I put the shirt on and evaluated the changes I'd need. When I first brought it home I thought it fit (not great, but OK) in the shoulders and all I'd have to do was shorten sleeves and hem. I should've known better. No RTW fitted shirt ever fits me in the shoulder if it fits across my bust and butt. And the armhole is always too low. This one was no exception. Why I didn't see that at first, I don't know. But I'm stubborn so I couldn't let that stop me. ;-)

I started pinning. I made a tuck at the shoulder seam on the shoulder side, making no changes to the sleeve. I ripped out the top part of the armhole seam and pinned the sleeve further into the armhole to see how it was going to fit. It seemed like it was going to work great. So I basted it and tried it on again. The shoulders were still too wide. I ripped the first basting and tried it again deeper. This time, it looked good so I went ahead and marked a cutting line and then cut a big wedge out of the armhole.



This is what was cut out of the top 2/3 of the armhole. I could start ranting about RTW and pattern manufacturers and linebacker shoulders for women whose bones have not grown since high school. But I'll save that since I know I'd be preaching to the choir.



This is the sleeve pinned into the new armhole. I made no changes to the sleeve cap and sewed on its original stitching line. I pinned starting at each end and working my way to the middle in case I ended up with extra fabric to ease in, but I didn't.



Next it was time to deal with the droopy armhole. The sleeve circumference was also too big so I just sewed a deeper underarm and side seam, tapering to nothing at waist level. Doing this was like sewing the sleeve in flat and then sewing up the sideseam last, which is how the shirt was originally constructed. If it had been a set-in sleeve, I might have re-set it properly. Or maybe not. This is a Walmart shirt after all. ;-)



After serging the armhole and sideseams, I hemmed the sleeves shorter. If you look carefully at the photo above, you should be able to see that the original hem is not really a hem. It's a facing, topstitched and edgestitched. I didn't want to rip all that stitching so I was lazy and just turned the facing up once and then edgestitched and topstitched that.

Then the bottom hem. I cut off 1-1/2" and then pressed up a narrow double fold hem and topstitched that.

The last thing was to sew two more waist darts in the back. I figured I might as well do all the tweaks at this point, since I was on a roll. They look horrible here but Zillie has no butt. I do. The back fits me so much better with the darts. What you can't see are the original two waist darts. They are set very close to the sideseam. Why they are there, I have no idea. But I left them. With all the seaming and darts (there are 2 waist darts in the front too), what's another couple of darts.



So here it is again, Before …



… and After.



ETA: I forgot the best part. This sticker was on the front of the shirt when it was hanging on the rack.



Um, I think not. Unless you have a sewing machine. ;-)