So I bought this t-shirt at Target on
clearance for $6.50 but it means so much work! I mean
it looks ridiculous! It's way too baggy, the sleeves are way too big and baggy,
and most importantly? It's way too long we need to slim it like what what's up
with that? It doesn't make any sense to me! I'm SD and we've done a lot of different
alterations so far and this is going to be, and I promise you one of the easiest
ones that we've ever done. No like it's it's stupid easy. It's so easy to do. But
if you're new and you've never tailored anything before you can go get caught up
down there in the description. You can learn about where to get a sewing
machine. You can learn about needles, and thread. And tailoring chinos and jeans
and jackets. All that stuff so go binge watch that. Now I do not think that my
t-shirt should be this long. I think that it should be this long. So I'm gonna go
ahead and I'm gonna put a pin in right there. Boop! Now that pin you see right
there? That is going to be the very bottom of our t-shirt. And what we have
to do now is we have to starch it and iron it down real good so that it is
nice and flat. Alright so here's what we got going on here. We have our shirt
here. And I've got the pin still stuck in there exactly where I want it to be. Now
what we're gonna do is we got to measure how much we're actually taking off of
this thing. So that's when we take this and we do that. Seven inches! We are
taking off seven inches from the bottom of this shirt! I didn't think that was
actually possible but apparently it is I think that's kind of ridiculous but
whatever it is what it is. Now! This is what I need to point out to you, this
down here. This is what's called the original hem. This is the hem that came
from the factory. Now a lot of people like this hem and there are ways to do
it so that you can keep this hem intact. And you can also shorten the shirt at
the same time but here's what's up. You can only do that if you're taking off
like in inch, two inches maybe three inches. Not a lot at all. Anything more
than that and that things just it's got to go away it just is what it is. Not a
big deal so. Okay so we got our shirt flipped inside out. Where'd my pin go? Oh there
it is okay cool. Now we're gonna fold it and we're gonna
iron it down. And when you fold your shirt obviously you want to make it so
that it's straight. But surprisingly it's not really all that hard to do. You could
make it straight pretty easily that's what Ellen DeGeneres said. Because you
want to make sure that it's straight you don't wanna be walking around with no
like crooked t-shirt like "hey what's up guys look at me my t-shirt fits me
perfectly but it's all lopsided like that" yeah fun picking up girls like that.
So we got it pretty straight so we could take this pin out that we were using
there temporarily and now actually I want to show you this first. So when I
was talking about the original hem and all that stuff. This, I got this. See this?
This is a tank top with the American flag on it you know why? Why not this is
America. And I'm actually I'm gonna turn a t-shirt into a tank top coming up here
shortly we're going to use this for it but I'm gonna show you the hem on the
bottom down here. This is what a factory hem looks like looks like that on the
inside, and it looks like that on the outside. This is exactly what our white
t-shirt is going to look like when we're done with it. This top straight stitch up
here is one inch from the bottom down here. And then this second straight
stitch that's going right across there that's a quarter of an inch down from
there. So all right we got to iron this all you do
just get a whole bunch of starch. Heavy starch. The heavier the better. Spray the
crap out of it and just iron away. And you want to take your time on this part
too. Because you wanna make sure that not only is it flat but you want to make sure you
don't have any wrinkles down here like this. You want to get rid of those
wrinkles cuz otherwise you're just gonna sew them right into the shirt. And again
what you're gonna do walk into public be like "hey what's up y'all!
I tailored my own shirt check this out ignore those wrinkles go ahead what's
your number? No no don't even look at that let me look at that what's your
number how about we go out sometime that'd be nice huh?" Irons are hot too
when you want your iron to be careful. there, alright so we're good. Now what
we're gonna do is we're gonna take a couple of pins and we are gonna put
these pins in here temporarily. Just to kind of hold our place for now. We're
gonna move them around in a couple of minutes but we want to make sure that
our flat seam here doesn't get all crazy or move on us or shift on us cuz that's annoying when that happens. We're gonna put them on the front and we're gonna put
them on the back right back here. Does it, does it make me narcissistic if I bought
these for myself? They were like 15 bucks I needed new ones
don't judge me! Okay now these temporary pins that we have in here they're just
placeholders for now they're not doing anything special aside from just keeping
this guy in place so it doesn't go all crazy on us we don't end up wasting our
time. Now since we are taking off seven inches from this? And we're gonna put our
top straight stitch one inch from the bottom down here? What we got to do is we
gotta measure it so let's do that. So grab your measuring tape and go one
inch from the very bottom down there. And we're gonna do the same thing with these
other pins. One inch. Now as far as the number of pins that you want to use. You
can use the number of pins that you're kind of comfortable with. I'm going to
add a pin right here and I'm also going to add a pin,
I don't know I'm gonna add one right down here. Just so that I can make sure
that everything is straight and I line up these pins as good as I can. And I
almost burned my hand on this hot iron so maybe I should I don't know
turn that off that's probably a good idea huh what do you think? My daughter
was about to learn some swear words today that's for sho! Flip your shirt
over and do the same thing on the other side. That's it that's it! Time to sew
let's go. Let's let's do this. Alright. That's never happened before.
Okay so let's line it up and I always like to make a point and say that
measuring and pinning is the easiest part! It's the easiest part of this
entire process and it really is. Except for this. This is gonna be the one time
we're sewing is gonna be trickier than pinning. And the reason for that? Is
because we're sewing in a straight line. I made an entire video on it, on how to
sew on a straight line. There's a seam guide right there. What we want to do, is
we want to look at our seam guide. Make sure that the edge of our shirt lines up
with our seam guide. What we don't want to do is stare at our needle going up
and down. That's not okay that's not how this whole thing works. You will have a
crooked stitch if you do that. Now I've got a perfect 1 inch line right there.
And take your time go as slow as you need too. Don't uhh, don't put your your
needles on there. Cuz it'll little make em go flying. This shirt is so ridiculously
wide that this is taking me like 30 minutes to get all the way around it
it's like sewing around the Earth geez! Okay so we're done with this first
stitch here. And a lot of things happened that I'm actually glad happened because
they might happen to you. Now as you can see we have some pulling in this stitch
right here. It's kind of pulling at our shirt and it's
pulling at our fabric because the tension between the two of them is very
different. Now the reason why it's doing that is because I didn't adjust my
stitch tension. I made an entire video on stitch tension
and why it's important how it works and all that stuff. This is the reason why
you want to adjust it. Now is it the end of the world? No. But does it look good?
Not really. And there's a couple other things I also want to point out here too.
So the reason why you can kind of see these stitches?
They're called skipped stitches what my machine was doing was skipping stitches.
And that can happen for a couple of different reasons that can happen
because of the stitch tension and that can also happen, and usually happens
because your thread isn't the same. So the thread that's in your bobbin isn't
the same thread that you're using on your top stitch. Now this over here? This
just straight up ain't alright, you see that? That's not okay that's where we started
our stitch and that just just kind of looks messy. Now the reason why it looks
so messy is because I'm using a different color thread. If you were to do
all of this if everything looked exactly the way that it does only I was using
white thread? You wouldn't really notice any of this. This is why I use a
different colored thread so you can see exactly what it is that I'm doing. And if
I make a mistake you'll see exactly what that mistake looks like. And this too
this is the reason why you want to check your stitch tension. Because I sewed
right over a wrinkle right there. That's not okay. But what we're gonna do is we're gonna
cut off this extra fabric here. We're gonna cut it to about, hmm, about half of
an inch to that line right there. We're gonna cut all that down. And then we're
gonna sew another straight line a quarter of an inch down from this
straight line. Sometimes I feel like I have to hurry up but then I
that I can just speed all this on the post. Look at all this look at this look at
this extra fabric! This is how long our shirt was! Oh my goodness!
Are you serious? That's uh that's everything that we took off of our shirt.
Look at that! Wow man hmm. So this is what we're left
with here. I cut it down to that top stitch right there. Now we're gonna put
another straight stitch a quarter of an inch down from our first stitch. And what
I loved about this entire process is not only does it show you how to shorten
your shirt but it shows you that like, mistakes happen too.
I'm not perfect at this by any means at all. I still make mistakes,
I still get things wrong, and all of this really kind of showed you what to avoid
when you do it. Now you know that you need to check all of your sewing machine
settings before you start. And even then? That still might not be enough. That's
just, not only with tutorials on YouTube. But that's just life in general. Nothing
really ever goes according to plan. You are gonna mess up so many clothes when
you start this! But guess what? That's just how it happens! So just push through
it and get used to it in practice. When I started on this entire journey if you
would have told me like two years ago or three years ago, that I would be sitting
here making a YouTube tutorial on how to use a sewing machine? And not only that,
if he would have told me that I would be using my mom's sewing machine and that I
wouldn't have my mom anymore. And not only me that my daughter wouldn't have
her mom anymore? I would have called you absolutely crazy but? Here we are. That's
a life bro. So just suck it up keep moving forward
and practice sewing stuff. I don't know how those two things are related but you
get my point. Wait for it, wait for it, BOOM! We are done just like that! And now we
have a t-shirt that doesn't look horribly ridiculous on us. It actually is
the right length it's not like three feet too long. It only takes you about 20
minutes or so. That's if you actually do
everything properly am i right? Yes, you can do the exact same thing on dress
shirts they'll have their own video and I promise we'll get my sewing machine
settings right SD out, deuces!
