Magic Darts

So being someone who does very little sewing of modern clothes, my dart knowledge is very minimal. 16th Century clothes don't use them at all and mid-to-late 19th Century clothes only use them at the waist, so the whole bust dart concept isn't one that I've really worked with.

When faced with the gaping armscye on the Dior dress, I had a vague idea that I could take a dart there and then shift the extra fabric into another dart. Did I have any idea of how to do this in real life? No, I did not. Threads magazine to the rescue!

For Christmas, the Husband gave me the complete set of Threads fitting dvds. I can tell right now, I'm going to get so much use out of these. The DVD made it perfectly clear how to shift the fabric from my dart to the existing bust dart. I took the dart in the muslin and marked it with a pen so that it looks like this:


Then I transfered the markings to the pattern, cut the dart, and taped it closed along the dart lines so the pattern curved from the dart. Then, I cut down the center line of the existing bust dart to release the tension, open up that dart, and get a smooth pattern piece again.

Et voila!



The fact that you can tranfer the extra fabric into ANY dart is going to mean good things for my Victorian fitting too. Hurray for darts!