DIY: How to Trim Slim Your Button Up Shirt
PHOTOGRAPHER/AUTHOR Eliza Starbuck
For Father’s day, I bought my baby’s daddy this sheer plaid Indian cotton shirt, I bought a Maryam Nassir Zedah’s store.
He loved it, only problem was it was too big!!! To wide and too long. I wanted it to be his new favorite shirt, so I offered to custom tailor it for him and this is how I did it….
So I had him try it on wrong side out, and I pinned up the sides to fit the way he likes it. This is extra easy with plaid because you can make sure that you’re making both sides symmetrical by counting the stripes. But if you’re not working with a geometric pattern, measure to make sure that your work is balanced.
Stitch the side following your pins. I tend to do two stitch lines, one over the other to make sure it doesn’t get pulled out because I don’t have a surger machine. At the armhole, make the stitch line slowly grade into the sleeve.
Cut excess off, but be sure to leave 1/2″ from the seams, so the seams don’t tear out. Iron your seams open.
(FYI, don’t ever cut anything on your bed the way I’m doing here. My grandmother and every sewing instructor I’ve ever had would be horrified. This is how you get holes in your sheets! Always cut on a table.)
Getting slimmer! Now how about that hem?!?
Trying the shirt on wrong side out again, tuck up the hem to the length that you like it. you can shape the shirt tail to your preferences too. Here we give the hem a rounded shape, with it getting higher at the sides, and the longest in the back.
Mark your hem edge with pins at the fold line.
Trim the hem edge 5/8″ from your pin marked edge line.
Make sure that your hem is symmetrical. Fold the shirt in half, matching the side seams and the button holes up to their buttons and trim the hem so that both sides match.
Make a stitch line 1/4″ from the hem cut edge. This makes it easier to iron the fold for your hem finish.
Fold and iron the edge around the 1/4″ stitch line, and then give it another fold and iron another 1/4″ so that the raw edge is concealed.
Stitch along the folded line edge for the final hem finish.
Et Voila! Shirt finished. Husband happy!
hey eliza! this is so great. i’m definitely going to try and do this for my hubby. question though, what about the sleeves? did you do any work? was it too wide for your husband?
Hi Nina, great question. I did take the arms in just a touch at the armhole so that there would not be a tuck at the sleeve, so when I was stitching and I hit the armhole, I turned the bend into the sleeve, following the underarm seam, and I stitched tapering the shape until I could gradually meet the seam again. If the sleeve for your husband is entirely too big, then you can pin the under arm in the same way we did the side seam and just keep stitching from the side seam armhole all the way down to the cuff, or as far as you need to take in, just make sure that it gradually makes it back to the original seam near the cuff so you don’t have to try to take the cuffs in too. Hope that helps! E