Add Fisheye Darts to a Readymade Garment
Nicki LaFoilleDescription
Alterations to readywear garments can be challenging, but adding a fisheye, or princess line, dart to a shirt or dress is easy. Nicki LaFoille shows you how.
If a shirt or dress is too large at the waist, taking the excess out at the side seams is not always the best option. If you find you have excess fabric pooling or folding horizontally at the small of your back, this method is for you. A fisheye dart is a double-sided dart that begins and ends in points within the garment, rather than at an edge.
With the garment wrong side out, put the garment on and pinch out the excess fabric on each side of the center back. Having a friend to help will make this easier, however it is not necessary. When you remove the garment, you can straighten up the lines and ensure the darts on either side of the center back are symmetrical.
Stitch the dart as you would any dart, beginning at the fold of one point and stitch along the marked dart. End at the opposite point by gradually stitching the dart off the fold, to achieve a smooth dart without sharp points.
For more readywear garment alterations, check out these videos:
Shoulder Seam Alteration
Pants Seat Alteration
Taking in a Shirt
Oftentimes you'll have a ready made garment that you have purchased, but it has extra around the waist and especially at the small of your back and taking that out of the side seams is not always the best option. If you try taking it out of the side seam, often you'll find you get drag lines across the back and that fabric is still there kind of folded horizontally. So a better way to approach that is to zip out a dart in the back, uh a vertical dart called a fish eye dart or a princess sea dart. So a dart going to the edge of the fabric is like a v, the fish eye dart is like two darts glued together. So you have two points and you're taking out the most fabric at the center where the dart is the widest. So when you put your garment on, if you're working by yourself, you can put your garment on wrong side out and try to reach behind and kind of pinch out how much fabric you need. And we're pinching out symmetrical darts, one on each side of the center back. So even if as you're pinching it out. It's not perfect and it's not pretty. When you take that garment off and look at it, you can fix your line and make sure each dart is symmetrical. But if you have somebody to help you that always makes it easier. So on this garment, we're taking out the widest amount of fabric here, right around the waistline and then we're going to re that dart back up to zero. And on this one, my dart is longer on the upper edge than it is below and that's fine. It's, it depends on the garment and the body that you're fitting it on. So we're pinning out this dart and we're going to be nipping out that excess fabric so that it doesn't pull in the center back and then you would stitch this as you would a regular dart going from one point, going from right from the fold, going right from zero, widening it out and then going back down to zero at the other point. And then on the right side of the fabric, you'll just have a dart line that looks just like a seam line symmetrically on each side of the center back. So if you have a garment that has that fabric pooling in the center back at the small of your back, try this technique and you might find that you can tailor that garment more to your body and get a garment that fits you a lot better
Share tips, start a discussion or ask other students a question. If you have a question for the instructor, please click here.
Already a member? Sign in
No Responses to “Add Fisheye Darts to a Readymade Garment”