I absolutely feel your pain in knowing how difficult it is
sometimes to just get nice,
smooth, beautiful darts.
I mean,
what's the secret.
They always seem to turn out so pointy and awful,
right? I've got five of my best tips for you in
this video on how to avoid the dreaded pointy dart.
Welcome back my sewing friends.
It is always so delightful to see you here.
If you are just new.
Welcome. My name is Evelyn Wood And I'm the creator of
VintageSewingSchool.com. And here on this channel,
we talk everything about garment sewing to help you so better
garments. So if you haven't already do check and see that
you're subscribed so that you can see all of the future
videos to help your sewing in today's video.
Of course we are talking about darts because it can seem
like mission impossible when you start sewing,
when you just learning to,
they always turn out.
So pointy,
right? What's the secret.
I know I always wanted this.
So let's talk about my top five ways.
Basically my process,
those go from start to sort of finish in a,
in a process of sewing a dart,
but my top five points that I want to share with
you on how to avoid those dreaded pointy darts.
So let's get right into it.
The first one is that you will never ever start by
sewing the pointy end.
No, no,
no, no.
So it was really,
really difficult if when you fold over right sides together,
wow. You know,
we have our dart,
folding it over.
You never want to start on the pointy and start sewing
because it's almost impossible to sort of glide onto it evenly
without munching up your fabric and too hot.
You always want to start sewing your darts from the larger
end and then sewing it off to the point.
And all of my further points roll off from,
from this,
this premise that we're starting from the large in,
and going down.
And so when you have those darts that are like,
like a back dart,
it has double point dart.
Sometimes you can even start in the center,
come down this way,
come back,
start here and then do the other ones.
So you're always ending at the point.
This one is a personal trick of mine.
And that is your one to mark your dart 0.1
centimeter. Even from the actual point.
Let me explain a little bit,
I think this is my favorite tips that my students in
Vintage Sewing School absolutely a mindblowing moment and really helps them
out is to actually mark the.in
from the point.
Let me show you,
So what I mean is when we're ready to mark in
our actual.here,
now let's just clarify your bust point,
your apex,
you never sew to that,
your dart will always be marked in a little further.
So your little triangle,
so to say it's usually marked here.
So what my method is is I mark in just one
centimeter or three eighths of an inch,
I believe at,
in, from that pointy part.
And that is where I actually mark my dart.
And that is the point that I aim to when I'm
sewing, rather than this point back here.
So draw in your.as
usual, if you need to,
I would suggest drawing it in on the,
the far side of your new dart.
If you need to do this,
draw the lines in,
I will for demonstration purposes.
And so obviously we're going to sell a little bit further,
but it gives you a room for me when I'm sewing.
I know when I am aiming for a point,
I generally need to go a little bit further.
And so this is actually gives you a little bit of
room to,
to taper off and smooth off the point.
So you're not just coming to,
to exaggerate this into a chunk.
You can sort of smooth around,
off the end,
which is my next point.
So what I do is I come down and I come
down. And so,
and as you get to this,
you know,
slightly in a mark,
that's what you aim for that you don't have to be
touching the fold of the fabric at that point,
but it sort of aim for that.
Then you've got this little buffer.
And so when you get here,
what you actually do is you sort of start to pivot
your fabric a little bit and you want to sow two
or three stitches down along the fold,
only two or three stitches,
basically to your almost hit the,
the other pin there you should,
at that point along the fold.
And what it does is it just rounds off that point
and smooths off.
There's that very,
very, very pointy part of it.
So in practice,
so all the way down,
and then as you get to that sort of mark does
leave your needle in the mesh,
in the fabric,
pivot a little bit and keep sewing down.
Be very,
very, very careful as you do this,
though. The next tip is to not backstage as you get
to this point.
So instead of trying to go backwards and reverse to lock
your stitches in,
just lift up your needle where you're ready to finish,
lift up your foot,
bring out your threads without reversing.
Give yourself a little bit of length here on your tails,
chop those off.
And then what you want to do is actually manually tie
off these ends.
So rather than back stitching just a good old fashioned,
not you've got two pieces.
It's not very hard.
Just time,
like you'd sort of tie shoelaces to do a double.
And then the very key is to actually leave again.
Another sort of centimetre,
three, three eights of an inch of your little tails,
little thread ends.
Don't chop it right down to the notch because there won't
be anything to hold it in and it will come apart.
But if you leave a little bit of ends,
it'll be nice and smooth.
Now that we're sewn,
the next thing is to press this.in
a curve,
our busts curve.
And so if we press it in a curve,
it's going to not be as pointy.
So this is the tip that doesn't even involve sewing.
This is where you will want your pressing hem,
a sausage hem,
a sleeve roll,
anything, roll up a towel,
scrap fabric,
anything you can get to make a curve that you can
press over.
So you want to smooth off and curve the very point
here. So you will get this and find a nice spot
that it sits on.
See that.
Can you see how smooth that is?
Maybe? Yeah,
you have to lay it this way.
This is what,
this is how you use these.
And you do anything you can to be able to have
this sit super smooth.
And then when you press this and lots of steam and
pressing this,
that we'll just press out that sharpness too.
And we'll mould around.
Think about this shape is kind of replicating your boss and
so that your dart will be moulded around it.
Now synthetic fabrics will not mould as well.
So you'll find it won't work as nice.
You'll likely get more pointiness with synthetic fabrics,
natural fibres will really want to smooth and mould with all
that steam.
So it will be easier to use the,
the heat to do that as well.
If you don't have one of these already,
I promise you,
you will not regret getting one.
I do have links to these guys in my Amazon store.
It's linked down below.
Yes, they are affiliate links and thank you for using them.
It doesn't really cost you anything,
but it does help me and this channel I know by
following just even some of these points that you will get
less pointy darts for sure.
And I really look forward to hearing your experience through it.
If you really enjoyed this content,
I share all of this and much,
much more over at my online school,
VintageSewingSchool.com. I have left links down in the description box below.
Cause I invite you to come join me.
If you're ready to take your sewing to the next level,
that is what we do.
So come join me there like this video,
if you liked it,
and please let me know which of these tips you are
going to use the most in your sewing and how it
goes for you.
I love to read all of your comments and sharing it
all makes us all better sewist as we collate our information
together as a sewing community,
yeah, thanks so much for watching until next time.
Happy sewing.
Bye.