Get This Tutorial As a PDF
This tutorial has been updated, and is now available as a full step-by-step with photos in my new book 7 DIY Men’s Shirt Makeovers, part of the DIY Men’s Shirt Makeovers System.
Tying in to my first Style It Chic! post from yesterday regarding the denim work shirt as current closet staple, in this post I’m going to show you how to fix that denim shirt you stole from your guy – or thrifted – into something that fits you properly.
As many of you know, I love finding both my materials and base items for my DIYs at the thrift store. I’m always searching out the biggest, baggiest shirts (so I have tons of material to work with!) for my shirt re-cons. Thus what I find is rarely pretty, and rarely fits. It’s always the potential for a remake that gets me so excited.
So what to do with those shirts that you find – that you want to wear yourself – but aren’t quite your size?? You’re going to be keeping the sleeves and the length, let’s say, but why doesn’t the shirt look like it fits right? And what to do?
Can you tell what it is that’s making my shirt look too big in the above photo?
This brings me to my first Fitting Tip, the most critical for making your shirt look like it’s the right size:
I cannot stress this one enough. This is what makes the difference visually between “she’s wearing her boyfriend’s shirt” and “she’s wearing a cute shirt that fits her.”
We’ve all tried on a guy’s shirt before, right? And, invariably the seam connecting the sleeve to the shirt (called the “armscye seam”) will be hanging off our shoulders, lying somewhere on our upper arms.
This is a DEAD GIVEAWAY that your shirt doesn’t fit you!!
Even if the body is un-fitted, loose-fit, billowy tunic, whatever…if this seam is in the wrong place on your body then it will look like it is the WRONG SIZE FOR YOU!
When looking at yourself standing normally, this seam needs to be as close as possible to traveling straight up from your armpit to your shoulder, in a straight line. (Raglan or set-in sleeves are different, and there is a little variation to be had when you’re dealing with a blouson, caftan, or loose blouse or dress but in general this seam needs to be in that basic area.)
The closer this seam is to going straight up from your armpit – the more fitted and chic the garment will look. Even a t-shirt will look flattering and feminine if the sleeves are attached to the body at this line.
The body is far less important than this armscye seam in Fitting Tip #1. There are more variations when it comes to the shape and size of the body piece, so words like always or never aren’t very useful here. Again, in general if the body is too loose right at the underarms, the piece will look big and billowy on you, even if the armscye seams are in the right place.
So how to re-fit your shirt?
How to Re-Fit a Men’s Button-Down Shirt To Your Size
You Need:
seam ripper // marking chalk // pins // scissors // sewing machine & needle for the fabric in your shirt // thread matching the topstitching thread in your shirt // mirror
The Straight Pin Method: How to Move the Shoulder Seam of a Too-Big Shirt to Fit Your Body
1. Remove both sleeves by opening the armscye seams. Do not rip or cut through either the sleeves or the shirt body. Often button-down woven shirts have topstitched seams, so you’ll have to go through both rows of stitching to pull the arms off fully.
Remove all the little messy threads from your ripping.
2. Try the shirt on and button it up. Put one hand on your hip. Looking in the mirror, mark where your shoulder seam SHOULD be by drawing a straight line up from your armpit to your shoulder. Mark with a pin straight at the shoulder.
3. Take the shirt off and lay it flat. Sketch a line connecting the pin you marked the shoulder with and where the shirt hits at the armpit. (Make sure you “square” the line – which means that the line crosses at a 90-degree angle over the line of stitching connecting the back yoke. Add 3/8″ to the outside of this line. Draw the new armscye by mimicking the shape of the old one.
4. Cut off the excess fabric. Fold the shirt in half, sketch around the edge of the armscye you cut onto the other shoulder area, and cut off the excess fabric on the other side as well.
The Mirror Method: How to Re-Fit the Body of a Shirt That’s Too Loose
5. Try on the shirt again, buttoning it up and putting it on inside-out. Now the vest-like shape of it should look right – at least at the shoulder area. Pin at one side to make it more fitted, looking in the mirror as you go, placing the pins as close as you can to your body. Drop your arm and confirm in the mirror that the shape of that side is now fitted and looks “right” for your body – not too tight, not too loose, and the shirt can move with you without constricting.
6. Take off the shirt and mark at the pins. Copy your markings to the other side as well by folding the shirt at the center and pushing the pins through both sides, marking where they skewer the side without the pins. Unfold the shirt, lay it flat, and remove the marking pins. Draw a line of “best fit” to connect the marks your made.
8. Sew along the lines you drew and trim the excess. Now the shirt should fit your body properly. (I’m wearing a shirt underneath, so it looks like it’s very fitted in the photo above, but it’s actually loose when I wear it as a single layer.)
How to Set Shirt Sleeves That Are Too Big Into Smaller Armholes
9. Now that the shirt fits you in the body, it’s time to reattach the arms. Turn the shirt inside-out and place one sleeve inside it, right sides together. Pin the armcap of the sleeve to the armscye of the shirt, all the way around.
10. Sew the sleeves to the body. If necessary, topstitch both armscyes on the body side to re-create the finished look of the original shirt.
And you’re done! The manly shirt (or too-big women’s shirt!) should now fit you pretty well – and not look like you just stole from your guy’s wardrobe.
Note: With this method it’s unfortunate, but the sleeves will end up slightly shorter than those of the original shirt. It really can’t be helped, which is why I try to find my big shirts with too-long sleeves if I can.
In some cases, when you go to re-attach the arms you will find that there is too much excess fabric in the sleeve cap to fit into your smaller armscye. You have one of two options:
1) Make the sleeve smaller by sewing the sleeve seam closer together at the underside.
2) Match the sleeve seam to the shirt body side seam while pinning, and gather or ease the excess fabric at the sleeve cap to create a “puffed-sleeve” look.
When altering this particular shirt, I used Method #2 and ended up with sleeves that are slightly puffy at the shoulders.
This can be done with anything that has the sleeves set incorrectly for your frame: t-shirts, long-sleeved shirts, button-downs, dresses – anything!! Hope this expands your options when shopping at the thrift store and alerts you to fitting issues before you buy something that doesn’t fit you well!
Hope this expands your options when shopping at the thrift store and alerts you to fitting issues before you buy something that doesn’t fit you well!
Happy DIY’ing!
xo
Carly
Get This Tutorial As a PDF
This tutorial has been updated, and is now available as a full step-by-step with photos in my new book 7 DIY Men’s Shirt Makeovers, part of the DIY Men’s Shirt Makeovers System.
Carly,
I am so happy I found your blog! I've been following for about a year and yours is one of the fashion blogs I find the most value in…fun, practical and inspirational stuff all rolled into one. Thanks for posting such great stuff!
Rebecca
Thanks so much. I've always been too intimidated to alter shoulders, and at the same time I hate droopy shoulders. This is the clearest, simplest explanation I've seen.
Informative. Live it!!!
Style while roaming in Manori Beach
Reminds me of a big argument I had with my friend in Paris when I opted for a knee high boots & he was like 'Where will u wear in India?'… Still a knee high boots is a must in wardrobe, dont u think so?
Style while roaming in Manori Beach
Oh, I love how you styled it in the middle, in the last photo! Excellent post – I often see fantastic prints in old men's shirts… this is helpful. Now only if I could sew!!
nice job. I would have totally just put darts in it, lol because arm holes ALWAYS frustrate me …as do waist bands and zippers. yuck. So nice job!
Wow, such a detailed post! That's awesome!!
http://thechicaddict.blogspot.com
Great tut! The process looks less scary than I thought too! Bonus. 🙂
Have had my eye on one of hubby's shirts for a while now, so will definitely be using this. Thanks.
Or, you could just buy a shirt that fits you?
great job! Love it
xx
wonderful!
Thanks to providing
Scarves Scarves
Thank you so much for this tutorial!!! My husband isn’t a large man but has a rather large neck so when we get him dress shirts to fit his neck size they are GIGANTIC on him everywhere else. He’s been asking me to alter his dress shirts and I had no idea how to go about it.
No problem!:-) The one thing to keep in mind, though – when you re-attach the sleeves – is that the arm-holes may become a lot larger or smaller when you take in the sides of the shirt, and you may have to re-situate the sleevecaps to fit properly. You definitely don’t want to add any gathers or pleats at the tops of the sleevecaps when doing this for a guy (as I did) since it looks really feminine…the sleeve ease (if it exists) should probably be down in the armpit area to allow more ease of movement, and hide any gathers that are created so the shirt doesn’t scream girly. Good luck with it!!:-D
Such wonderful informative info…thanks a lot
You’re welcome, lurleta!!
Suggestion: For a man’s shirt or women who do not prefer gathers one can:
1. Stay stitch two rows close within the seam allowance around the top half of the sleeve
2. Pull threads easing a slight gather, smoothing out to form a roundness
3. Pin sleeve to shirt leaving bottom (side seam of shirt and inside seam or sleeve) free
4. Pin and sew the inside seam of sleeve to fit the armhole of the shirt
5. Cut excess seam allowance of new sleeve seam and press
6. Pin remaining sleeve to shirt and sew
Should be a perfect fit.
Thanks, Eleanor, for such a well-explained suggestion! This absolutely will work for removing the gathering and just working with the ease…and cutting the sleeve seam closer to re-fit. Thank you for posting this!! 🙂
Thanks for this tutorial! I’ve been looking for one the whole day on how to raise the armhole area and this is the most informative by far with all the step by step photos.
I have some questions though… in the three photos where you say “Re-draw armscye to shoulder pin, add 3/8 to the outside, and cut off the excess,” I noticed that you didn’t cut off the front and back part exactly the same. There’s a bit of material from the back sleeve still showing through. Was this deliberate? So the back part should be left a little bit wider than the front you cut off?
Thanks for the help!
Hi JC! Lovely to see you here!
Yes, cutting the front and the back differently was absolutely deliberate!:-) If you look at most shirts you have, or any patterns for shirts in general, the shape of the armscye on the back bodice is fairly straight up-and-down (except for a small curve right at the armpit area); whereas on the front bodice piece there is a significant curve at the underarm area that extends forward a bit. This is to allow freedom of movement, since our arms spend most of the time moving in a forwards arc, and not backwards, and you need the extra fabric at the front of the sleeve cap to accommodate. Kathleen Fasanella, a patternmaker and consultant who has written THE how-to bible for starting a clothing line as a designer-entrepreneur, details this patternmaking issue in her book and on her blog a great deal. Her site is a great resource for those “how do I…?” or “why does this fit like this?” questions and definitely check it out if you’re interested in patterns and fit!
Good luck!
Hey there. I just wanted to thank you so much for this post. There are just hundreds of them these days but I swear to god it’s like wading through a murky swamp filled with half assed fake attempts and or straight up s#!+ (sorry. I mean … Poop) anywhoo, thank you for sharing actual useful information. I am forever in your debt. ☺️ Hugs!
You are welcome, Jane Berlin! Hope it helped a little!
It helped a lot!
I still refer to this tutorial all the time.
Bromeliad recently posted…Affordable shoes for the extremely picky
Thank you so much for this – it was exactly what I was looking for! I just found a handful of enormous men’s shirts that I had to have, now I can actually wear them! Thanks again 😀
Love it. you look great!!! I’ve been doing this all wrong!
Thank you so much for this great tutorial!!! I have been trying to alter all these mens shirts I’ve found at yard sales and the shoulders always turn out so weird! I am definitely going to try out your method!
This is great! I just got a shirt that I’m wearing in a rodeo next weekend and it’s way too big. Will certainly be trying this.
I’m a thrift-store shopper and keep finding blouses w/ fabric and colors I LOVE… in the XL section. I’m a S or M, depending. But I’m also a sewer, which leads me astray. I have developed a pile of tops, which wait next to my sewing maching. This article is perfect and the most detailed one I have found, so I am ready to give it a try. I plan on using a blouse that fits the way I like as a measurement for the sides & the arm width. Setting the sleeves will be the challenge I think, as they are huge in width. But hey, got to start somewhere! THANKS SO MUCH for this great step by step article!!!
You’re welcome! When the arms are so much larger than the body of the shirt, I’ve found that sometimes I’ve had to sew a line from the cuff to the armpit *inside* the original sleeve seam, at a sharper angle towards the armpit, to make the sleeves slimmer. It’s a good idea to place the sleeve cap around the armscye to mark how much excess width the sleeve had before sewing it. Hope that helps you get a jump on all the thrift store refashioning you have – sounds like fun! Good luck 🙂
How do you draw the armscye correctly? Where do I start? And is there a proper measurement?
Tried this on a man’s Pendleton wool shirt to fit me. Altered shoulders,side seams and length. Also made sleeve width smaller. I used one of my shirts that fits to get sleeve width and length, pit to pit meas. and torso length. Thanks for your advice.
You’re welcome! Hope your shirt turned out well! 🙂
I wear these altered shirts in the winter with a tneck underneath. Probably not stylish but a warm little jacket. Another alteration I made was to decrease the size of the cuff to fit my wrist. You’re ripping out, why not go all the way?
For the sewers out there–to me it seems you are inserting a set in sleeve vs. the original (almost a kimino?) sleeve. Most men’s ahirts have a continuous seam from cuff to torso hem. Just a few things to think about if you are trying to get a true allover fit.
What do u mean?
? If you need help, just let me know 🙂
Loved this entry! I have been looking for a tutorial like this for awhile. Can’t wait to try it. Thanks for posting it.
Thanks, Regina! So glad it helped 🙂
You’d make a great wife
lol, my husband may disagree from time to time… 😉
Hi. Can you tell me how to extend the side seam of a fitted shirt? I can’t work out what shape to cut the piece to add to the side seams to retain the lovely shape of the shirt. Thanks.
Hi Sue – do you mean you are trying to create a fabric insert to provide more width to your shirt? And you’re keeping the place where the side seam meets the sleeve seam intact? I don’t think you can keep the fitted shape of the shirt the same if you don’t open up the sleeve too…ideally, you would insert a long rectangle strip all the way from bottom to top along that side seam. But then the opening would narrow into a triangle right under the arm, so the bust might fit strangely.
I think you have two options: either open up the sleeve seam a couple inches too and insert a piece of fabric that is a long rectangle for the side…that narrows into a triangle where it goes into the sleeve opening (a little higher than the actual armscye, into the sleeve itself)…OR insert a long triangle of fabric into the side seam, then create a front dart on both sides of the shirt below the bust to recreate that “fitted” look. Without actually seeing the shirt it’s a little tough to tell what might be best…
Hope that helps! 🙂
Thanks!
You’re welcome 🙂
Carly,
Thank you SO much for this easy to understand guide on altering a large shirt. I was able to save a shirt easier than I thought and it only took me a couple of hours. Much appreciated!
You are so welcome! It is a fiddly pain to alter a shirt this way but the results are really, really nice, and allow you to make use of what’s in your closet rather than getting rid of it. Hope you enjoy your new(ly re-sized) shirt!!
Oh My Gosh! I’ve been searching for this tutorial forever!! You’re awesome! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I so want to recycle men’s shirts and get stuck with the upper shirt being too big!!!!!
You’re welcome, Gracie Wood! It takes some time and is a bit fiddly, but doing this will fix the shoulder/arm fit issue every time. Good luck with it! 😀
I just found this post and I love it! I have a couple of shirts to try this on. Thanks so much!
Jools recently posted…Suits Into Bags!
You’re welcome, Jools! Hope it proves useful to you 🙂
it’s that easy? blimey! i have a uniform coat that’s too big for me, but i love it because how tough the fabric is and how fast it dries. i’ve been meaning to alter it to fit better and never did because i wasn’t sure how to go about doing it without cocking it up. now i finally have a good idea on it and should be able to bang it out easy peasy. cheers!
Yes, it’s that easy – but would be more complicated on something like a coat that has a lining. And you do lose a bit of length to the sleeves, so you have to keep that in mind as well. Hope you’re able to make the adjustments you need easily! Good luck!!
Iam having trouble altering the bottom front of a shirt as it hangs out at the front under my big bust but I don,t want it fitted too much as I have a very big bust
This is an issue that could be helped by adding a dart at the bottom of the shirt, about 3-4″ to the right and 3-4″ to the left of the button placket. The top of the dart is right below your bust, which will make the shirt more fitted at your waist area. Does that make sense?