Wednesday, September 9, 2015

Manipulating Body Darts

by Kathy Wright


While at the ASG Conference, I took an all-day class on Manipulating Body Darts withy Hisako Nakaya, owner of Professional Sewing Supplies in Seattle, Washington. I thought to myself, why is the class all day long? I will by sooo bored. I was not!
Here is a much simplified version.
We started out with a blouse pattern that we liked. Any pattern with darts will work. We then taped those darts together as if we were sewing them. Then we decided where we wanted to put new darts, such as the shoulders, under the arms, or around the neck. You can put them anywhere you want. I and the lady next to me chose shoulder darts. We cut the pattern twice, down to about 1 inch from the apex of the dart. We put the pattern on new pattern paper and taped it down. When you lay the old pattern on the new pattern paper the dart will separate where you cut it. You just have to make sure that the design lines are even when you tape the pieces on to the new paper. That is the hardest part.
We traced the pattern on the new pattern paper, checked that new pattern for fit, and cut out a muslin. We sewed the new darts in to see if we liked them and checked again for fit.
It was a time-consuming process, but we had fun and learned a lot. 


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