Darts… a mini tutorial (sort of)

SO….I offered to help with showing what darts are…with regards to sewing. And sort of to explain how adding darts can help make a garment more fitted to the doll or action figure (or person!)  

 I’ll do my best to explain, but since I’m self taught and err..tend to make it up as I go along I’m not sure quite how helpful this will be!

So here we go! 

*as usual click the thumbnail for a larger image*

First, to kind of make it clear, I’ve made a simple illustration of a pattern. You can see it with and without the darts drawn in.

I know they aren’t the best drawings.

Ideally everything is straight, and the darts are angular. Just pretend with me, ok? (they’re like longish triangles….the non equilateral sort)

On the back piece of the pattern, the top dart (1) is usually for making the shoulder pieces fit togther better. and to make it lie better on the body. (If I hadn’t rushed through this last night, I would have added one to the dart-ed shirt I made. It would have helped it)

And please note—

You do NOT have to use all the darts that I have drawn in (all the time) it really depends on the fit you want from the garment. What is important is that you do them symetrically. So on one side of the bodice front, if you have one at the breast, you ought to have one on the opposite side) etc.

And there are other dart-types as well… (look for a good book on sewing? DK makes a nice one)

If you take the patterns above, this is what you get:

If you sew them both, these are the 2 different looks…

(am using a small-chested soldier story body, which is sporting Jun’s head. This top would look somewhat different on a larger chested doll as the darts would emphasize more of her assets!)

(bear in mind I threw these together last night and they’re both rough and not very well done)
 <—-No Darts    Darts—->

Yep.  There’s a definite difference in how the shirt looks!

Darts help to shape the garment. (I chose poor fabric to make these examples out of, sorry!)

SO…how do I get darts?

Simple! Sew up those pesky triangle-y things!

I know, you just gotta love my tech-speak, eh? :p

Here’s what I mean:
 

This is what it looks like on the right side of the fabric after you’ve sewn the darts up:

That’s the general gist of it anyway. Questions? You can ask, and I can try to answer…