shirt and pants tutorial

Simon says he thinks people are getting annoyed with/tired of the alteration posts. He thinks perhaps a post about the wide array of my hair volumizing products might be more interesting (I have the most dull and lifeless locks in all of the land). I don't necessarily disagree with him but my bosom friend Jessica asked that I do a little alteration tutorial. I don't say no to bosom friends and agreed to do the tutorials and with all of this typed...I'm sure some people have already closed the window...most understandably. 

Shrinking shirts is incredibly easy even for sewing dummies like me and pants aren't too terribly difficult either. Hopefully this will help explain the processes a beeet:

Here is an American Apparel t-shirt I purchased recently with a Groupon. It is only a teeeeeny bit too loose so I'll only take that in a very little bit. As for the pants...they are obviously from my Nutella hoarding days...

lovely

we'll start from the bottom up with the pants. Necessary participants:

scissors (pinking shears are best but I don't have a pair), sharpie, pair of pants to be fixed and pair of pants you would like the pants to emulate/duplicate

begin by laying both pants bottom down (pants to be fixed need to be inside out) on a flat surface:

like so

Use the sharpie to trace the INSIDE of the top pant leg onto the fixer pants:

(I like to give a leeedle bit of space between the tracing and the top pants because you can always fix "too big" but it takes a LOT of seam ripping and cursing to fix "too small")

repeat on other leg

saddle the pants onto the sewing machine TOP of leg first. I start sewing RIGHT where all three seams meet so that I don't pull the back down and make lowwwwww rise pants

slowly pull away from the seem and start following the traced line

and keep going (you can start sewing inward at the knee if you want skinnier pants...or more outward if you want flares)

 Repeat on other leg (begin at the meeting of the seams like last time)

Now, cut the excess fabric (where those pinking shears would be nice to avoid fraying)

on both legs

let your very helpful little helper play with scraps:

try on!

If they are not sufficiently tailored...repeat process  (I had to repeat threeee times...but better than ruining the pants and making them too small with the initial tracing)

and onto the shirt!

Ingredients:

fixer shirt, shirt to be copycatted, sharpie and scissors (and sewing machine that is not pictured)

Turn the fixer shirt inside out (muy important), lay the fixer shirt underneath the model shirt and line the collars up as best as possible and trace the top shirt from the BOTTOM of the sleeves down

just like that

head over to your anxious sewing machine and trace the lines...

 repeat on other side 

cut excess fabric

 try on!

(again...if too large...repeat and repeat again if necessary)

ta daaaaa

revel in all your altering glory

Confusing, crystal clear or somewhere in the murky waters in betwixt?