Refashionista Basics // Re-fitting a Granny Blouse

It's time to go back to the basics! Some of you told me you'd love to learn more basic refashioning skills, and I'm here to help. There's a time for turning dresses into skirts and sleeves into blouses, but most of the time, refashioning is about the simple fixes. So, over the next few months, I'm going to share some basic tricks and techniques for clothing alterations. Because let's be hones, most of the time we need to hem jeans, and replace a zipper, right?

Today we're tackling a granny blouse that had great bones, but a horrible fit. You can find these types of blouses in any thrift store. They have a very simple and wide cut, mostly in big sizes, which is actually a huge plus in my book (lot's of room to play around), but they look super baggy. 

I didn't want to make any radical changes - all I wanted to do was make it a few sizes smaller to fit my petite frame. Now, if you've ever tried to down-size a blouse like this, you probably ran into one or two problems. First, the bust. Well, most women have one, but the cut of this blouse is not curve-friendly. Which is why most times, just taking in the sides will result in boob-drama. Second, the shoulders. Mostly, smaller women have smaller shoulders, so taking in only the sides will result in droopy shoulder-lines. When you have broad shoulders, that might not be an issue, but usually it is.

One way to fit a dart-less blouse would be to add darts, but since a lot of beginner seamstresses are afraid of them, I thought I'd show you a simpler way to make room for your boobs (yep, I've said boobs twice in this post already) - adding shoulder pleats. 

Here's how the whole thing goes down.

 STEP 1 

Put on the blouse and pin the amount you'd like to take in the sides, and then pinch together the shoulder, so that the sleeve seam is exactly on the shoulder nook. Take the blouse off. By the way, a lot of the times I sew in my sports bra, because there's so much fitting involved and I can't be bothered to switch back and forth between shirts. 

 STEP 2 

Next, cut off the sleeves. Then, turn the blouse inside out, and draw a new side seam line with tailor's chalk. I didn't want to lose any width in the hips as a wanted this to remain a very flowy blouse, so I I drew it diagonally into the existing side seam at the lowest point possible. But, if you need to, of course go all the way down as your pins indicate. 

 STEP 3 

Now it's time to fix the shoulder and add the pleats for shaping. The pins indicate that I needed to remove 4 cm from the width of the shoulder, so I decided to add 2 pleats which would both take in 2cm. The pleats need to be at least 0.5cm apart, but 1cm is even better. So I needed to mark 2cm+1cm+2cm=5cm. Ideally, you'd want to position your pleats in the middle of the shoulder, or slightly towards the sleeve. Mark the the position of the pleats by marking the outer line of the first dart and the outer line of the last dart. Depending on how many sizes you need to go down, you might need to make more than 2 darts.

Draw the pleat lines at a 90 degree angle from the shoulder seam. The length of the pleats should be about 10cm. If you're very tall, you might add a couple centimeters to that, or if you have a very short upper body, you might make them a little shorter. You can adjust this after pinning.

Before pinning the pleats, rip apart the shoulder seam a little past the last pleat mark.

The green lines indicate the first pleat and the blue lines indicate the second pleat. The pink lines indicate a fold line. So, fold the fabric so that the fold-line is in the center of the fold and the green lines meet and the blue lines meet. The pleat itself should be on the inside/wrong side of the blouse.

 Pin the pleats, and try the blouse on. Make any changes necessary (maybe to the pleat length, or you might need to make the pleats bigger/smaller). 

Sew the pleats, and press (both to the same side). Sew the shoulder seam.Cut excess fabric from the blouse back following the front arm hole line. 

 STEP 4  

Next, it's time to re-fit the sleeves. Place the sleeves on the armhole so that the seam allowances overlap. Re-cut the upper curve if necessary. This part is a bit difficult to explain. You want your sleeve hole to always be a little bit bigger than your arm hole, because for the sleeve to sit right it needs to have ease at the shoulder. If you've ever sewn from a pattern, you'll have noticed that. But, since this was a loose-fitting blouse, I didn't have to worry about the ease that much. I needed to chop off a little from the top.

 STEP 5 

Sew the sleeves back on. Finally, and this is optional, I folded the sleeve hem up once and sewed it into place with small 1cm long seams in the middle and at the armpit. 

Give all the seams a good press and you're all done.

Shoulder pleats are a clever way to get some bust shaping without adding darts. This technique can be applied to most blouses and shirt that have need bust shaping. You could even use it to re-fit a men's shirt. This won't work on something you want to shape to be very fitted and snug. 

I actually debated turning this blouse into a minidress, as it is quite long, but decided a blouse would get more wear. Although, there might be a dress in that blouses future some day. I tried a belted version as well, and I'm not even sure which way I prefer it. What do you think? One thing I love about this blouse is the neckline, though. Isn't it gorgeous?

I hope this is helpful for some of you trying to master the game of refashioning. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments. There are not silly questions, so ask away!

xo. Hanna