Taking a shirt in and shortening sleeves
Okay. New module. We finished with the jeans bag, and now we're moving on to shirts, because a shirt that's too big or has sleeves down past your knuckles is basically wearable fabric you're storing instead of using.
Here's the thing about shirts. People think taking one in is complicated because there's a collar and buttons and it looks finished already, like it's off limits. It's not. You're not rebuilding the shirt. You're adjusting two things, the side seams and the sleeve length, and both of those are seams you already know how to sew.
Taking in the sides
First, put the shirt on. Not on a hanger, on your actual body. This is non-negotiable for me. You cannot eyeball how much fabric is extra from looking at a shirt lying flat on a table.
Pinch the excess fabric at both side seams, roughly where a side seam already exists, and pin it there while it's on you. Do both sides. Check in a mirror that you're not twisting the shirt around your body, because that happens more than you'd think, one side pinned tighter than the other and you don't notice until you've sewn it and it hangs crooked.
Take the shirt off carefully. Don't rip it off over your head with pins still in it, I've had a student do that and it went about how you'd expect.
Now, turn it inside out and mark your new seam line with chalk or a fabric pen, following the pin line. Here's where I'm going to slow you down even though you want to just sew. Measure the distance from the old seam to your new line at three or four points along its length, top, middle, bottom. They should taper smoothly, not jump around. If your numbers are all over the place, your pinning wasn't even and you need to redo it. Close enough isn't a setting. I know that's slow. Do it anyway.
Pin along your marked line, sew a straight seam, then try the shirt on again before you cut off the extra fabric. This is the part everybody skips and it's the part that saves you. If it's still not right, you've got fabric to let back out. Once you trim, you're committed.
Trim the excess to about half an inch past your new seam, and finish the raw edge with a zigzag so it doesn't fray in the wash. I don't own a serger. I've said that before and I'll say it again, a zigzag stitch does the job fine for a shirt you're wearing to work or to run errands, not walking a runway.
Shortening the sleeves
Try the shirt on again, sleeves included, and decide where you want the hem to sit. Mark it with a pin on the outside of the fabric, right at your wrist bone or wherever you like a cuff to land.
Take it off, lay the sleeve flat, and measure from your pin mark down to the current hem. That's your total amount to remove. Fold that same amount up from the current hem, all the way around the sleeve, and press it with an iron so you've got a clean fold line. Pin it.
If the sleeve already had a cuff you want to keep, this gets slightly trickier, you're removing the cuff first, cutting the sleeve to length, then reattaching the cuff to the new shorter edge. It's the same steps, just one extra piece to keep track of. If you've never done it before, do a plain hem this first time and save the cuff-preserving version for round two.
Sew your hem. And here's my one opinion I'll die less hard on than pinning, but I still believe it: for a casual shirt hem like this, you don't need to backstitch like your tutorial is telling you to. A couple forward stitches at the start, a knot at the end, that's plenty for a hem that isn't under real stress. Save your backstitching for places that'll actually get pulled on, like a bag strap or a pocket corner.
The thing about "already sad" fabric
I'll tell you why I don't hesitate on projects like this anymore. A while back we had board game night at Brayden and Jessica's, and their dining chairs had this fabric that was just done, worn shiny in the seats, one corner starting to split. I'd brought fabric for something else entirely, and it was sitting right there in my bag, and the chairs were right there being sad, and nobody asked me to do anything about it, but by the end of the night two of their chairs were reupholstered and everyone else was still rolling dice.
That's the mindset for shirt reworking too. You're looking at something that's fine, not thrown away yet, but not quite working for you either. You don't need permission and you don't need it to be a big project. Pin it, measure it, fix it.
Before next time
Bring in a shirt that's too big through the body, sleeves and all, we'll do the full alteration together next lesson. If you don't have one, an old button-down of a spouse's or a hand-me-down works great, nobody's precious about those.