Perfecting your skirt or trouser waist darts
On most patterns and blocks darts are drawn in as straight lines, this is also a common practice on industrial patterns where the factories want the darts to be easy to mark and sew.
Those of us sewing at home, producing our own tailor made garments, have the time to enhance our darts and make them fit properly to the curves of the body. After all a body is curved not straight! This post will show you how to achieve a more shapely dart.
If you are making for a client or yourself you also have the great advantage of being able to have a fit session and try the garment on. When you try a garment on a body, slight fit adjustments can be made through the darts, but remember to spread these adjustments around the body and not focus them in just one place. For example if a waist is too large, in that case, a couple of millimeters can be taken from each dart and also each side seam (which are also darts) to fit the waist.
Also visually if looks better if a dart is slanted. particularly darts close to a side seam.
A Large back skirt or trouser dart looks much better if it is shaped differently at the top and the bottom believe it or not.
Remember that after any change you make to a dart you will need to make sure that the dart legs are still the same length and that when the darts are folded in, that the waist still runs smoothly.
Have you tried following my skirt block drafting method in the previous post – if not why not give it a try.
Lets take a look at the back darts
If you are interested in contoured darts, you may want to take a look at my contour fitted dress block!
Happy pattern drafting.
Nicola x
