I am addicted to men's button-down shirts. I have an oversized denim one that I wear at least once a week, so when I saw this pin-striped Van-Heusen dress shirt in the men's section at the Salvation Army I couldn't resist.
I used this tutorial to guide me, but I didn't follow it exactly. This tutorial would be helpful if the shoulders of your shirt were like hers, but luckily mine weren't too far off & I decided not to mess with them.
There were three problems with this shirt:
- Sleeves: These were fine in length since I planned on rolling them up, but they were too big around.
- Width: It was too wide & relaxed for my liking.
- Length: Since I planned on making it more fitted & also wearing it this summer, I wanted to make it shorter.
I put the shirt on inside out & pinned one side & one sleeve how I wanted them to fit. I measured the distance from seam to pin & pinned the other side as well. Make sure to try on the shirt at this point & button it up. I didn't do this step & had to restitch the sides.... Unfortunate.
The tricky part was getting the armpit curve to appropriately fit & not look super awkward. I was lucky enough to get it on the first try. After you've pinned how you want the curve to be, stitch along the pins. Set the stitches on your machine to the longest/loosest setting. I had mine set at 3 when it really needed to be set at 4. The sleeves ended up being kind of ruched, but I didn't worry too much about it since I stitched it underneath my arm & rolling up the sleeves helped hide it.
Since I didn't have an overly large amount of fabric left over on the inside after I fitted it, I decided not to cut it closer to the hem, but you could if it was too much. As usual, the last step was hemming. I made sure to hem the flap of extra fabric on the inside down to avoid unraveling & whatnot.
This was one of the harder DIYs I've had to do because of the structure of the shirt, but it was SO worth it.
TOTAL COST: $2 and about an hour of my time :)
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