How to Tailor a Men's Dress Shirt

Today we are going to tailor some of my button down shirts. There is no reason why this is specific to men's shirts, works the same for men's or women's shirts! Super easy and you will feel so much more comfortable now that the shirt actually fits! What a concept...

In this tutorial I am going to be taking in the torso on my shirt so that it has a more tapered look. It is super easy and I was thrilled with how much better the shirt fit afterwards and how much more comfortable it was.

What you will need:
- A shirt that doesn't fit as well as you would like it to
- Sewing machine, thread, and pins.

Steps:
1) Put the shirt in question on inside out. Then on the side seams, while you are wearing the shirt, pin each side so that it fits better. I decided I would not take in the arms at all but you may want to given the fit of the shirt. Start on the bottom and work your way up to the armpit of the shirt. (It is at this point where you either stop if you are not going to take in the sleeves, or if the sleeves are too big work you way from the cuff into your armpit and have both pinned eyes meet at the same point in your armpit.) This is what it should look like when you are all done.

I took about 2 inches off both sides (1 inch of pinned fabric) and didn't pin my arms. Its very important that you take in equal amounts from both sides or else the button down may not be in the center anymore. (I may have done this on a shirt I am not showing in the tutorial...)

2) Now take the shirt off while keeping the pins in. 

Now I don't have a close up of this, but from the left most pin I am going to make a sharp angle toward the armpit seam. 

3) Starting from the bottom of the shirt, sew a straight stitch on the line you made with your pins. 

As I mentioned before, once you get about an inch away from the armpit seam you should angle over from your tailor seam to the armpit seam edge. Sorry I don't have a better picture of this. 

4) Once you have done both sides I would try the shirt on again to make sure you like the way it fits, if it is still too loose take it in more, or if you made it too tight then take it out and start again. Depending how much your took in you may want to cut the fabric out. I opted not to do this, mostly to allow me to take the shirt back out again later if I want to. But you don't want the flap on the inside, so I sewed it flat. 

This is the flap on the inside you now have. 

Here you can see that I just folded it toward the back of the shirt...

..and pinned in flot. 

Then sewed it again. 

This will cause you to have a new seam line on the sides of your shirt but I didn't think this was a problem and it was nice to have the flap pressed flat and out of the way. 

Thats it! You now have a much better fitting shirt! 

~Andrew