- The knit top pattern is one of our most used base pieces.

With only three pieces, we will fit it, sew it, change it, and then sew it again.

The knit shirt is the most popular garment of our modern times because of its comfort and easy care, easy to wear, easy to sew.

And once you get the secrets of today's knits, you can make yourself a new knit top in no time at all.

We'll show you all the steps in making this top your favorite today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(warm upbeat music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by: Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Benno's Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

- The knit shirt is the second piece in our capsule wardrobe.

We will probably use it, change it, style it differently, do all of those things, probably more than any other piece because knits are so popular today and they're so readily available to us, and that combination is a win-win.

There's been a long-held debate, Jeannie, I'm gonna bring her on, about in a T-shirt, do I do a dart or no dart?

Now, you gotta keep in mind, if you know the origin of the T-shirt, it was in the '50s, James Dean, actually, it was World War I, if you want to go way back, it's what the combat soldiers wore under their uniform, in their wool uniforms, to keep them from perspiring.

They were cotton T-shirts, and it's evolved, rather than being an undergarment to an outer garment.

But if you take that now and you put it on a female with a D-cup-plus bust, and it doesn't really look that flattering, and it causes lots of wrinkles, and you know, it hikes up in the front and it's off the shoulders, so we don't need to preserve it exactly like it is.

We've decided, thank you, Jeannie, that we're gonna put a dart in our T-shirt.

So the ladies are gonna go back and put their muslins on, and we're gonna conquer fit, and we're gonna get that T-shirt to be exactly how you want, fit-wise.

But before we do that, I want to talk a little bit about fabrics and styling.

Let's first go to fabrics because we have so many choices with our fabrics today.

The problem is is we gravitate to knits.

Women are a bit confused, and rightly so, and I can understand why that is the case.

Years ago, we didn't have knits.

We had fabric and fabric was woven and it had a weft and a warp, and you did pat, this with it.

But knits stretch, and because they stretch, we have a variable with our fabric that we haven't seen in the past, and we have to be comfortable with that variable.

Once we become comfortable, the whole world opens up to us, and it's just a whole bunch of fun.

But I've got some different fabrics here, and I want to look at each one.

This is a burnout, and what happens with a burnout, if you have a lot of negative ease, negative ease is just a term that's used when the garment itself actually measures smaller than her physical body, and that's actually what we're gonna do with a T-shirt.

If her bust is 40, we want that T-shirt to be closer to 38, less than.

If we wear a T-shirt and it's equal to our body measurement, we start to look heavier than what we actually are.

So negative ease is a term we want to be familiar with when we come to T-shirts, and we want to use it.

But if we're in a burnout and we have negative ease, you start to be able to see right through the fabric, and the burnout loses itself.

Keep in mind that that stretches in one direction, but notice I have no stretch in this direction.

So when we're making T-shirts, it's important that we put that stretch going around the body, because that's where we need it to be.

If we notice in this particular fabric, it's a little bit heavier, but my stretch is not as much.

Notice that that is minimal, but this stretch is really not even close to being as much as this is.

But now, when we get to the blue, there's super stretch in both directions.

So all of that amount of stretch is actually going to affect the sizing we make, and that's good news and bad news.

Just simply that we, as the seamstress, have to interpret the fabric as we go to our pattern.

So we'll use the same pattern, but we'll want to trace it off, just so that we don't actually cut the size we are.

I'm gonna recommend that we trace it off, and all I mean by that is we're gonna take a piece of muslin, whatever fabric we're gonna make it out of, and I'm gonna take my three pieces.

T-shirts only have three pieces, they're the front, the back, and the sleeve.

And I'm gonna take my good old Sharpie, and I'm just gonna trace the size I need it to be.

So I'm not gonna cut my pattern again, and you can see, when I trace it, it goes right on to my muslin below.

So I don't have to cut anything.

I can just trace it, use it, make it up, do the alterations I need to there, and then I can make the pattern different sizes, according to my knit and how stretchy it is, or how non-stretchy it is.

So let's go ahead and look at, we're gonna bring on two examples.

Both ladies, both T-shirts, same pattern, they both decided to be darted.

We're gonna bring on Jeannie and Cindy both.

And in this case, what we're gonna do is they've made up the size they chose.

Notice in both cases, negative ease.

Jeannie's gotten a little more negative ease, you notice, than what Cindy does, but that's okay.

Their choices, their decisions.

So I always think that that circumference needs to be really exactly what you choose and what you decide it to be.

I don't think you can let anybody tell you what circumference you should be wearing.

So as we change these T-shirts, I'm gonna mark and put Jeannie down here so that you know that these changes are gonna go to Jeannie.

And Cindy, we'll put you over here, and these changes will go to Cindy.

Okay, just to make sure it's straight.

And I think it's a good idea, just as you have your muslins, and remember, muslin, a lot of us confuse it with being a woven piece of fabric because there's a woven fabric out there called muslin.

This is just, it's knit.

We call it a muslin just because it's gotten the terminology that just means it's a trial run.

It's really difficult.

Tissue doesn't drape, tissue can't be a negative ease.

Tissue can't really give you the look of what fabric's going to give you.

And so, we want to put it up in fabric just so we can really make sure those differences are what we want them to be.

And even with a dart, you notice, Jeannie's still got a little bit of gapping in there.

That's just simply because we gotta do a little bit of work.

All right, so we're gonna follow LCD.

This is really easy to do.

You're gonna stay with me.

We're gonna go length is from the shoulder to the bust, the dart, I wouldn't do any changes in there.

I like where it is.

You notice it's falling right below the bulge.

The good news is in a T-shirt, even though we'll do much good, we don't want it to be visual.

It's not something that we want to walk around and make sure everybody sees first.

And when you are creating a dart, and in this case, we're gonna do a French dart.

And what the French dart is is the combination between the bust dart, which it's in the regular position from the side seam, and the waist dart, and we pull it together.

So not only does it take away all the lack of length that we have over here, but it creates, really, a seamless vision from the front.

All right, so we're gonna leave it there.

Are you comfortable with the circumference here, or do you feel like you want more?

- Maybe a tad more.

- All right.

You always are gonna pick the circumference you want.

We're gonna pick it, actually, for the bust.

Women say to me all the time, well, I'm one size here and one size here, go for the bust, and you want that negative ease.

I'm always suggesting to you to measure T-shirts that you wear.

How did you pick your sizing?

- Once again, I measured another T-shirt that I had that I like the circumference of, but I didn't like how it fit me.

- Okay.

All right, perfect.

So I'm just gonna release those two side seams, and then, when you make your muslin, what I would recommend, and you notice she's done it here, she's got extra inch there, and the same at the side.

If you're not sure, you only want to make one muslin.

You want to make this quick and efficient.

Go ahead and add two inches at the side if you feel like you need more for the hips.

There's nothing wrong with going from one size at the bottom to one size at the top.

Both being too small and both being too tight, both of those things can cause you to look more or less.

You know, it's like the Goldilocks.

We want it to be just right, right there on the middle.

You're gonna be the one, again, who decides that, but we want to make sure it is.

All right, so that little gap there is most likely coming from the shoulder seam.

Always go to your seams first.

And when there is a gap here, that means extra fabric here that's not over here, that means it's depth, because we couldn't take the same all the way across.

Length means it's the same all the way across, circumference means it goes around, and depth means it's in one place and not in another.

So I'm actually gonna pick it up right here at the shoulder, and you can see, with that simple alteration, away it goes.

That just looks so pretty already.

And then, I'm gonna give her a little more circumference at the hips.

Again, don't make a T-shirt for your hips.

Please don't do that, okay?

Women say to me all the time, but when I shop, it fits my bust but it doesn't fit my hips, so I need it to be bigger.

But in sewing, we can actually just make it bigger at the bottom, and it'll fit everything, but do it that way.

Okay, so I put these little pins back in right here at the side, and boy, that looks so nice.

It gives your tummy a little bit of room, but it doesn't make it too tight.

It also comes in just under your bust.

You want to do that.

Everyone has a hollow right under their bust.

It's a real positive to show that off, and that's just really pretty.

Let's take a look at the back.

And then I'll make the changes on the tissue.

I don't see any changes on there.

I think that looks great.

Yeah, I don't think we need anything, I think you're good.

So I'm gonna hang on just right here, and let's just make these changes really quick.

We're going to, in this particular case, we just made a change at the shoulder seam.

And so, all I'm gonna do is whatever amount that was, I'm gonna take it off right there, take it off right there.

Okay, and just take that down.

On the side, the side seam is just a straight angle line.

So in this particular case, I'll start here, and I can just add the extra.

Just literally, it's a straight angle line and just go out.

If you're using a dart and that dart is there at the side seam, close it up.

Angle it out, then open it back up.

And that way, just pretend as if it's sewn when you add the extra, and then when you open it back up, you can continue to add whatever extra you need in those particular cases.

We do have a sleeve, and I think it's always a good thing to try a sleeve on.

And for a sleeve, especially in a T-shirt, you're just looking for is there enough circumference.

In this particular case, feels good?

- Feels good.

- Great color on you.

- Thank you.

- It's too bad, you could make this up now, except you wrote all over it.

- I wrote-- - That's okay.

So sometimes, we call that our wearable muslin, because you know, we probably just have to make a few little changes.

There you go.

- Thank you.

- All right, Miss Cindy.

Thank you, and I'm gonna ask you, if you don't mind, to change, 'cause you actually made a final one?

- Yes.

- We want to see it all made up and all finished.

With Cindy, we're gonna go through the same exact process.

Before you ever start on a T-shirt, when you've got that muslin, kinda just take a step back and you want to observe, and just kind of look at everything.

And then also pay attention to, when you buy T-shirts, what are some of the fitting issues that you just don't like?

- The drag lines on the sides, and then it always pulls to the back.

- Always?

- Always.

- So in ready-to-wear, when you purchase everything, you never can get anything to kinda stabilize?

That's gotta be annoying.

- If the fabric is really soft, sometimes, it will fall forward by itself, but if it has any body, it pulls to the back.

- So it's constantly choking you.

- Yes.

- And you've tried lowering the neckline?

- A little bit, and that doesn't always help.

- Okay, so the reason I ask her that is because it's so, typically, a lot of us, we go to that neckline to try to solve the neckline.

That neckline is not the problem.

The problem is the back, and I'm gonna turn her around, and just, again, do some observation.

Notice she's got some gapping right here, and if you notice where that shoulder seam sits naturally on her, it's quite extremely toward the back.

There is not a right place for the shoulder seam.

However, when I pick up the shoulder seam, I should be able to get reaction from the front and reaction from the back, and if I can't get that, then I know the shoulder seam needs to go forward.

But I want you to notice her neckline.

Because this is so far down and because of this gapping, what that tells me is there's really just not enough room for the back.

It's almost like anybody trying to analyze a problem.

You want to bring in all the variables and really listen to them.

The key thing that she said to me is when she buys ready-to-wear, it always pulls to the back.

The back, because it's convex, it needs more space.

As she moves her arms and does all those things, daily work, if there's not enough room in the back, it will pull the front to the back to get the room it needs.

Now, this is not a real common problem, but I'm gonna say it's common enough that it's really aggravating when it happens.

So we're gonna do a little solution here.

I'm gonna bring her up here, and don't go nuts here.

We're gonna solve this, and you're gonna see the solution as we come in right through the blade area.

And I'm gonna fix this first because typically, I would go to the shoulders, but because this pulls back, I really can't deal with the shoulders until I get this done first.

If you're doing this by yourself, you probably know you have the problem, because just like what Cindy said, everything she buys in ready-to-wear pulls back.

That's your sign.

So right in the shoulder blade area, probably about six inches down, I'm gonna do a little horizontal slash right into, to but not through, the arm, the arm (mumbles).

All right, cut across both sides.

Once you do this, let the T-shirt naturally fall, and let it naturally open up.

All right, everything will go to its natural place all by itself.

It will just feel so much better, it will kind of, I guess I say it will relax a little bit.

Most people, that is not even an inch.

If you're doing this by yourself, again, you can probably start with three-quarters of an inch.

And then, clearly, because you can't pin this behind you by yourself, I'm just gonna put in a piece of fabric.

And I'm gonna pin this in place so that it really creates a comfort for her that she can live with on all the T-shirts she makes.

Now, remember, when you are doing this, because it's a knit top, you're only gonna have to do this once.

Everything else she makes from here on out, she's gonna use this back as a template, so she'll have the length she needs, she'll have everything she needs to be in place.

A lot of women give names to this.

We don't really need to do that.

If I were to give any name to it, I would just call it a rounded back.

Cindy does not have a rounded back.

You can see, her back seems to be very straight, so I don't think the names are so much important as we understand what's happening, the garment's pulling back, and it's really uncomfortable, and we're gonna fix that.

Does that feel better?

- [Cindy] It does, it's not choking as much.

- And what you want to do, I think, when you first do this, is leave it on.

I would slash this.

You know, you're gonna take it off, slash it, sew in the piece.

The widest point is here, you notice it tapers to nothing at the sides.

Just leave it on for a little bit.

Go do about your errands, run around the house, you know, do all that normal stuff that you do.

All right, and again, when we look at that shoulder seam, how much nicer it is, and how much more control I have.

And that gap is completely gone now.

All right, so then I'll start in.

I'll look at the dart, I think your dart is good.

I'll look at the little gap she's got here.

I'll pick up the angle of the shoulder seam.

Now, notice what we did is it came forward, but the angle, she's a little more sloped than what the pattern is.

But notice now, because of the placement of the shoulder seam, easily, I can control the front and the back seam, and it's just really beautiful on her.

And I like that.

I like that, I don't see any diagonal gapping there.

I don't see any swayback here, and we're good to go.

What I want to do though is make sure you understand where to put those changes.

So this would be on her back.

I'm gonna go ahead and cut right through here.

Cindy, you know what I'm gonna do?

I'm gonna let you go, 'cause you've made a final T-shirt, haven't you?

- I have.

- If you don't mind, let's go put that on, and we can show everybody what we did.

And I'll show you the pattern change as well, Jeannie and Cindy, our changes.

This is where the cut is.

On her, it was just about three-quarters of an inch, so I'm gonna slide that underneath.

And remember that it went from the center back over to nothing at the side seam.

Now, the whole goal of this is to not have this change in the actual garment.

We want us to look as perfect as possible.

And when you have on a garment that doesn't fit, it kinda shows the flaws.

When you actually have on a garment that does fit, it makes you just present yourself to where you look perfect, even though we know there's no such thing as perfect.

So we're gonna insert that in, and we're gonna cut this away.

And then the other thing we did is we changed the angle of the shoulder.

So I'm gonna turn that up just a little bit like that, and then talk about a couple things.

Okay, two things that I get.

Number one, we notice that if we put a straightedge on that center back seam, it's not straight anymore.

And so many of you panic that you can't put that on the fold.

You still can.

You're just literally gonna cut that little area off.

Or what you can do is go from this point to this point, you can add a little bit at the bottom.

You see, if I follow that straight line down, it adds a little bit at the bottom.

I could take a little bit off this side and re-taper that line.

It's not a big deal.

I absolutely can still put that T-shirt on a back.

I do not need a center back seam.

I can put it on a fold.

When I go to do the armhole, I've done this in the front and the back, and I've got a little bit of difference here to the original armhole.

I want to make sure that original armhole is restored.

The shoulder was not the right distance, so I took a little bit away, but I'm just gonna, literally, take this amount that I took out, I'm gonna bring it down just a little bit and re-draw.

So the armhole, once it was like this, I'm just gonna drop it down like that.

You can make a template of that original armhole if you want to, or you can simply measure it here and drop it down that same amount.

Both of them have their garments, they're changed, and we're gonna bring 'em back to see the new and improved.

All right, so Jeannie decided to do it in a print.

Tell us a little bit about that.

- I basically did it right directly from what the adjustments were on the muslin, and I decided to do a print so that I could wear it with all of my solids.

- Capsule.

- Capsules.

- Yay, do you like it, feel comfortable?

- Yes.

- [Peggy] Not too much negative, it's perfect?

- Yes.

- Looks really nice.

Cindy.

- I decided to do it in cream so I could wear it with everything.

- [Peggy] There you go, good capsule-base color.

- Yes.

- I want you to notice, with Cindy, on this particular case, there's a little bit of, in this particular fabric, and keep in mind, sometimes, when you do that real garment, you might still have to go back and tweak.

I'm gonna tweak this just a little bit.

Most of the times, when you go back to tweak, that tweak will actually be in the seam, so don't feel like you'll have to make a new one.

But I'm gonna pick that up just a little bit, and you can see what that does is that pulls away that little extra fabric.

So she may have to take the sleeve out, and she's just gonna re-angle that shoulder seam, and then she can bring that down.

And you can see how that cleans up that side seam completely.

And the back, wow, what a difference!

It just feels good?

- [Cindy] It does.

- And have you worn it, is it pulling back?

- [Cindy] It's not pulling back at all, no.

- Yay!

For all of you who have worn T-shirts that pull back, you know how miserable that feels.

I can't say thanks enough to both of you.

Anything you want to say in general?

Would you go buy a T-shirt at this point?

- No.

- Because?

- Because they don't fit well.

- Well, and you don't have the circumference here and here, and yeah.

- We do, as women, we change circumferences so much from top to bottom that it is really hard to find one garment, even if it stretches to accommodate both of those needs.

Thank you, ladies, I really appreciate your help.

All right, so just a couple things that I want to mention when we're doing this.

And I want to, just for a minute, recognize that when we go and do our T-shirts, there's so many great things we can do with them.

And so, what we're gonna do is recognize that the fabrics make such a difference when we deal with T-shirts.

In this particular case, this is like a deep olive green velvet, and boy, it really dresses it up!

So I know a lot of us, when we hear the word T-shirt, we think, oh, I've gotta wear it with jeans.

No, T-shirts are just not worn with jeans anymore.

So this, I can really dress up.

It can go black tie with a beautiful skirt, or whatever I'm gonna wear it with.

And notice what we do here is we really take it casual.

We have a burnout, and so, it just changes it up.

The fabric, it's so much about the fabric, and that's why I say this garment, more than anything else, will be used over and over and over again, and those fabrics will make a lot of difference.

In this particular case, what I did, just a little style change, is I just took the sleeve, and I put an insert right into that sleeve, and just slashed it.

So I measured 12 inches down, 12 inches, just a square, but you want to make sure, on a knit that one way stretches and one way doesn't, that you put it the way that does.

Just test it, cut it both ways to make sure you've got it the way you want it to be, and then go ahead and pull it out.

But I do believe, in the case of a T-shirt, once we get that fit down, that fabric just makes so much difference to us.

I do want to show a little neckline change.

There's a neckline change that we can do that's quick and creative, and really brings about a contemporary T-shirt.

So, let's just look at the sewing machine here for just a minute.

And I'm gonna explain something that will work just beautifully as we go to our machine.

We're gonna take just a strip.

It's really fun to do it in stripes because what I can do with my strip is I can do it on the bias, which is what I've done here.

You don't have to pre-measure the length.

This is why I love this neck edge, because it's so easy to do.

Just cut it longer.

It's all raw and it's all on the outside, so it can be done really easily and really quickly.

And so, I'm going to sew the right side of the strip to the wrong side of the blouse.

Then I'm gonna actually just wrap it right around that covered edge, and I'm going to stitch.

And I've changed my threads to where it's a different color.

You're not gonna want to do that, okay?

You're gonna want to leave it all the same color.

And what you can see is now, how on the neckline, the edge is right to that outside.

And it's just incredible how contemporary that looks because as it goes around the neckline, that bias strip is so flattering.

It can become a focal point in many cases.

So all I'm gonna do is sew it the right side of the strip to the wrong side of the blouse.

I'm gonna wrap it around, and then just topstitch right on the edge.

The good news, too, is if I don't get my topstitch in exactly where it should be, I can come back and just trim it up.

I think I love this the most because if I'm a really, really bad sewer, I'll really look a lot better.

(laughs) Style is a simple way of saying complicated things.

Our guest next time is an image consultant who will help us discover our own personal style.

Join us on Fit 2 Stitch.

(warm music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by: Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Benno's Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

(warm music) (bright music) To order a four-DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch, Series 7, please visit our website at Fit2Stitch.com.