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Clothing is made to fit an average body that doesn’t exist. It’s the average measurements of people done by doctors from more than fifty years ago. It’s really hard to get ready to wear clothing fit you perfectly right off the rack. It’s great to learn simple ways to alter clothes to get a beautiful, custom fit. A custom fit is the best way to make your clothing look well-made and expensive.
There are lots of ways to alter clothes like lengthening or shortening hems, taking in the sides or letting out the sides, adding darts or removing darts, lengthening or shortening sleeves, mending holes, etc.
There is no end to what you can do with clothing, and you can even do additionaly refashions like adding a skirt, chopping off sleeves, and adding pockets to make something you love.
A lot of these clothing alterations work well for women’s clothing, but the majority of these work for all: men, women, and children. You can always take excess fabric in, and you can often let clothing out by using the side seams or adding fabric.
The Basics of altering clothing:
Learn how to sew a cuff on dress pants with just a sewing machine. This is an easy way to hem nice pants without sewing by hand. My husband’s cuff started coming undone so I thought I’d teach you how to sew a cuff while I was mending them. This is the quick “sew it…
Learn how to hem shorts with a cuff for a casual and fun look. This sewing tutorial requires minimal sewing and can be done by hand. I love wearing shorts in the summertime. I am always anticipating when it’ll be warm enough to wear shorts. In preparation for the upcoming heat I cut some pants…
What do you do when you find the perfect dress or skirt that has a long slit up the back? Close it up. My friend Beth asked me if I could do this for her and of course I said yes! I don’t have any before pictures, sorry, but here’s the after. I love that…
I love finding a fantastic dress with it’s own unique details. I was given this white and tan striped linen dress that was much too big for me. I learned this technique in a tailor shop, and it’s a technique that I use over and over again. Here’s a quick overview of how I fixed…
New suit=$0 I want to first of all thank my husband for letting me take pictures of him in his awesome new suit. He’s not one for pictures, but he looks amazing! I’m really happy with how the suit turned out. Click through these to see how to do the alterations: Pinning and Marking (This one…
Here’s the long awaited post. Sorry it took so long! I hope it makes sense! Unpick the flap on the bottom where the lining meets the jacket fabric. In the picture below it’s where the seam ripper is resting. (This can be unpicked and sewn back together with a machine, but since it’s on the…
After pinned, measure from hem to fold. In this picture, my measurement is 3 3/4″. That means that I need to hem up the pants 3 3/4″. Next, unpick the hem. Mark the amount up from the hem-line. (If you look closely, you can see two white marks on either side of pants.) Use a…
The next part of altering a suit is to change the stride. Here is a better picture of pinning the excess out of the seat. These pants must be old with the style of low crotches because I pinched a HUGE amount out. To measure, measure both sides of the pinch. For example if one…
Doing a waist/seat is one of my favorite alterations to do. It’s pretty quick, and I feel like I accomplish a lot. Measure the markings to see how much the pants need to go in. These pants need to go in 2 1/2″. Next, take off the belt loop. Unpick the inside of the waistband…
Here I’m going to tell you how to pin/mark a suit so that it can be altered. WARNING: what I’m about to teach you can only be done to suit coats with one center back vent that doesn’t have an obvious print, like a stark contrasting pinstripe. There is just too much to teach for…
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