Benefits of Knowing How To Sew – Altering RTW

The benefits of knowing how to sew are many, and one of those many benefits is altering ready-to-wear clothes.  When you know how to make the changes yourself, you save money, plus you don’t have to scramble to get a last-minute appointment with a tailor.  Additionally, if you fall in love with a ready to wear garment that may not fit exactly as you want, you can easily bring it to your expectations.  

The beauty of knowing how to sew is that you also understand how to deconstruct a garment; so you can take clothes apart as well as put them together. I recently needed to add length to a pair of pants that were too short.  If the pants were too long, that would be as easy as turning up enough fabric until the length was where I wanted it.  But, with the pants being too short additional fabric needed to be added from somewhere.  

The first was to use my seam clipper to remove the threads holding the hem in place.  After the hem allowance was released, there was still not enough fabric to lengthed the pants and re-hem them.  Even to leave it without a hem and show just the raw edges was not very attactive to me.  I have become more accustomed to a clean finish.  Plus, I don’t like to draw attention to my long feet.  So, leaving a raw edge, adding ruffles or any fancy lace trims to lengthened the hem was not an option.  

On another occasion, I needed to add more length to a pair of ready-to-wear pants.

The step-by-step details are all included in the video below; just follow the process that is outlined here to all length to a pair of pants.