14-Day Learn to Sew Series - Sewing Darts

Let's take a look at sewing darts. When you're constructing clothing and sometimes some decor, often times, one of the first things you do, when constructing, is to sew darts. And what are darts? This is something that I get, a question I get asked a lot, you know, what is a dart? And so a dart is a wedge shape that you sew into cloth to make it more three-dimensional, right? Because cloth is two-dimensional. It's kind of a flat object and then sometimes we need to shape it to a body. So for example, the blouse that I'm wearing actually has 12 darts in it. So it has bust darts on each side. And there's four darts, two on each side, for the waist. And then some of them are in back, I have shoulder darts, and waist darts as well. Now sometimes darts only take a little tiny bit of fabric, just to give a certain look as well. So, sometimes they're more structural, and sometimes they're more for fashion. So, they serve two purposes. But the main thing to understand about darts is that it's a way to shape fabric to fit something. All right, because when you fit something around the curve, you have to do something about the extra fabric that doesn't quite shape. And that's darts. We take out little wedges of fabric, to make it fit the curve. All right, so here I have a dart marked, and again it's usually kind of a wedge shape. Now sometimes the legs of the dart, so this is the dart point, these are the legs of the dart. And so sometimes the legs of the dart, are actually shaped in a curve that's pretty common as well. So, don't be surprised if you see that sometimes. Now, you'll have a dart on your pattern. I've just gone ahead and drawn one. There's different ways to transfer it on your pattern. Now, I just used a heat-away marker. This is the wrong side. Wrong. Wrong side of my fabric. Where I marked my dart. But, using a heat-away pen. But often times I'll use, this is actually a chalk paper, or sometimes called, carbon paper. You can see I've used it to mark a couple different darts, using a rotary, a tracing wheel. This is a tracing wheel. This is one that's called a serrated wheel. So it actually has little sharp edges, you can see kind of the dots there. This is good for getting the marks onto fabric that has some texture. There's also tracing wheels that are just smooth. And those are nice for delicate fabrics that this might damage. So, there are different kinds. And the one thing important with this type of tracing paper is to go ahead and test it on a sample. Some of these you have to be very careful that if you press on it, if you press, say the dart before removing the marks from the wrong side the marks can be permanent. It's not necessarily always a terrible thing because it's on the wrong side of your fabric. But it's better to know in advance what to expect. And so some of these can be brushed off. Some of them have to be washed off, or you know with a damp, damp cloth. So, test first. To make sure that you know how to remove those marks if necessary. Okay, so I have this drawn out so you can see me go through the process of pinning it. And you notice when I traced my dart, I went ahead and put in some reference lines. And I like those for when I'm pinning and stitching. Just, so I know where the end of my point is. And I know some marks parallel to each other because to pin this, I'm going to start at the point, and I'm going to push a pin in and actually sometimes I like to use a red pin. Right at the point. Red just tells me that's where I'm going to stop. When to stop sewing. So I'm trying to place this on just a thread or two on the fold and I want to make sure to, I drew this reference line and I just want to make sure that I'm on the mark. Now I also can check to make sure that the ends of the dart leg, are lined up. And when I sew this, I'm going to be sewing from the opening to the point. Now there are ways to sew from the point to the opening, but generally speaking, for most projects, it's best to sew from the opening to the point. So, I guess I know there are ways to sew the opposite direction. But, this is the most common. So, because I'm sewing from the opening to the point, I wanna make sure that my pins are pointed accordingly so that I can remove them as I go. And so what I'm doing is I want to pin, make sure I'm pinning on that line. Pinning accurately. Sometimes if I'm really worried about a dart being perfect, I'll actually hand-base with thread. That's a little extreme but sometimes if I have a project, that's kind of extreme, I will do that. Now, again, the reason I marked some cross-hairs here, just again, I'll put a pin there. Just to make sure that I am pinning accurately. Because darts, again, affect the fit of my clothing so I want to make sure that it's correct, that my pins are lining up all these marks accurately. Okay, so I'm gonna check both sides, I've slipped just a tiny bit. So take your time. All right, that's better. Take your time and use as many pins as you feel are necessary. You've seen that I am not normally a big pinner. In terms I don't use a lot of pins when sewing but this is one of those exceptions where I am very careful to use as many as it takes for me to be accurate. So I'm kind of stitching in a sense. I'm using the pins to kind of stitch my dart in advance. But again I want to make sure that they're pointed so that I can pull the pin as I sew. All right, that's enough pins for my personal preference. So let's take this to the sewing machine so I have a regular sewing foot, I just need to be able to see my marked line, that's the important thing so I like this clear foot so that I can see my stitching line. Now, of course you can see where I'm facing my pins so that I can pull them as I go. So I'm going to backstitch the beginning. I'm going to pull that thread out of the way too. Backstitch the beginning. Now I'm sewing with the regular stitch length. So as I get close to the blade of the pin, I'm going to pull them. So I just want to make sure that I'm stitching accurately. Now I'm getting very close to the points. I'm going to stop right here. For a couple of reasons. I'm actually, I'm gonna pull this pin. One mistake that a lot of beginners will do, is they'll kind of tend to swerve at the end. When you sew a dart, you wanna be able to sew straight off. Come straight off the fabric. And I'm actually gonna sew off the fabric. Now, most modern machines can sew off the fabric without jamming. But if you have an old machine, and I mean pretty old, like, before the 1970s maybe even, you can take a little piece of paper or stabilizer and place it right there at the end of the point. If you need to, turn your hand wheel, put your needle down, if you need to make adjustments, but I'm just gonna put this here, just for number one, so you can see what I'm doing. But also, in case, this machine won't jam, but just, to demonstrate, I'm gonna stitch off it. So, the goal is for me to stitch, I'm still technically in my fabric. My goal is to stitch off right at that point that I marked. Now, before I do that, I can't backstitch, or shouldn't backstitch because it will make it bulky. It'll make a little lump there. We don't want lumpy darts, okay. So I'm gonna shorten my stitch length, clear down to like .5. Basically, a short a stitch as I can. And I'm gonna sew with little tiny bitty stitches right off the edge onto my stabilizer. All right now if I pull this forward you can see where I've sewn onto my stabilizer off the edge. Again using tiny little stitches. Now if I'm using the stabilizer, I can just cut a tiny little piece there and I can actually even leave it in my project. But not everybody likes that. Another way that you can secure this, honestly, I usually just stitch off with those tiny stitches and leave a little tiny tail. And I've never had a dart fail because these stitches are so tiny and there's no strain at the very end of the dart. So, I just leave that there. But to secure it, you can, give yourself a little bit of room, and just backstitch go into the dart, and I'm just going to take a couple little stitches there to secure my dart and then I can pull it out. So here I've just secured that thread tail into my dart. So that's another way you can secure it again in my world, I usually just leave a little tail. And I have not had problems with that so let me just take it over here. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna go ahead and clip, clip this. There's more than one way to finish that dart point. So I just left a little tiny scrap of my stabilizer in tact, that's not gonna hurt anything. All right the pressing a dart is super important. And when you press a dart, you want to make sure to use a pressing ham. So pressing hams are designed to help you shape your fabric and basically think of them as mimicking body parts. Or you know, maybe you're creating something to cover around it or a shapely object. So, you don't, you want to always, always, press a dart onto a curved surface because the whole point, no pun intended, the whole point is to use the dart to shape, shape around an object. And so you want to use plenty of steam, generally speaking, and you wanna find...I can tell, I'm kinda on a flat spot here. I'm not really finding the sweet spot. So see when I get this ham, get this dart, smooth onto the end of this ham, see how this dimple mostly goes away? So this is a better, This is a better orientation. Careful not to burn yourself. With the steam, but you just want to find the spot on the ham move it around onto the ham. So that you can get a nice smooth press. You want to avoid having puckers on the end of your dart. And just shape it, use the ham and shape that dart. I have just a tiny bit of a dent right there. So again I'm just going to work with that. Until it goes away. Sometimes you kind of massage it with your iron a little bit. And so there is my dart! And so combination of practicing dart sewing skills and dart pressing skills will have you making beautiful darts in no time and a beautiful dart truly is the essence of creating beautiful clothing. So give it some practice. And you'll be a pro in no time.