How to do an easy dart manipulation to create a princess seam
What is a dart? Well, a dart is nothing more than a pleat, normally with a triangular base, that we make in the fabric so that our patterns acquire volume and adapt to the shape of the body. The most common points to place the darts are usually the chest and the waistline both towards the upper part of the body and towards the hips, although it is perfectly possible to add darts in other points so that the pattern can be adapted to the body, for example on the shoulders.
The dart manipulation I’m going to explain is very simple but I’m sure you will need it for most of your projects. We are going to see it on an upper body pattern piece where we will find the bust and waist darts. The process is exactly the same as if you were manipulating the darts of a skirt, dress or trousers.
Step 1
We start from a basic front body pattern with waist and bust darts. The origin of the darts is always placed a couple of centimetres from the central point of the bust to avoid ugly peaks that do not favour either the body or the garment. The first thing to do is to draw the line along which we will open the new darts.
Although in the photo I’ve drawn the new darts from the armhole, you can draw it from any point of the pattern you want.
Step 2
Now we are going to extend the point of origin of the dart we want to move (in this case the bust dart) to the central point of the bust.
Step 3
We are going to cut with the scissors along the line we have just extended and also along the line of the new dart.
Step 4
In the next step we are going to close the chest dart and when we do it we will observe that at the same time the new dart that we have drawn will open. And so with these 4 simple steps we have the manipulation made. Simple, isn’t it?
However, often for design reasons and even for convenience when sewing, instead of making several darts on our garment, we will convert one or more darts into a continuous seam, i.e. if we convert the bust and waist darts into a seam on a front body pattern, the darts will visually disappear and the pattern will be divided into two pieces. The seam that we get when we do this process on a body is called princess seam.
Step 5
The final step is the separation of both pieces. The last thing left to do is to cut along the lines of the waistband darts. By cutting the waist darts we are emptying them out.
And that’s it! See you soon!!
