http://www1.yoox.com/item/YOOX/MARTIN+MARGIELA/tskay/3FD17CD7/rr/1/cod10/410303523N/areaid/35

This is a great blog, thanks!

Erica

http://fiftyrx3.blogspot.com/2006/07/recycled-project-pt-ii-pt-i.html#links

1. For shirts that I’ll wear under other things, like vests or jumpers, and for which the sleeves aren’t too gigantohorrific in dimension, I take a long tuck/dart up the front, right straight over the shoulder and down the back. This pull the shoulders back in to the natural break as well as gathering in the bulk of the body, and can even be done with yoked styles. The tuck is visible, but either covered by the overgarment or something that can be pretended is on purpose. I suppose that an unyoked shirt could have a yoke of a contrasting fabric sewn on top to mask the shoulder part of the tucks, but I’ve never felt a need to go quite that far in departing from the original design.

2. For shirts that I really want to continue to be standalone shirts, though, I use a properly-fitting pattern to recut the armsyce/side seams and then reattach the sleeves after I reduce them in width to the new pattern’s dimensions. I leave the cuffs and where the sleeves join them alone, so these are sometimes a little larger than would be absolutely in scale with the rest of the shirt; since I almost invariably turn my cuffs up, however, this isn’t a problem for me. For the body, I use the (finished) front opening to line up the front of the pattern piece, which effectively reduces the body width by the cut along the underarm seam and armsyce, and I don’t touch the shoulder seams or collar/neck opening. I’ve not found that, for the style of shirt I have, the neck is so large that it is a problem, and that saves having to do all of that fiddly reconstruction. I do sometimes have to unpick the stitching to remove a pocket, and if the fabric has faded, that sometimes means a shirt is only suitable for the first reduction method, above, so that the unfaded part is covered by another garment. But there’s nothing that undoes this whole reconstruction subtlty more than half a pocket in your armpit. Aside from the pocket, paying attention to how seams are finished in the original (things like topstitching) and matching thread color of any stitching that’s on the right side of the garment can go a long way towards making the alteration undetectable.

These aren’t perfect solutions, but aren’t terrifically fiddly either. So for me these have been a nice middle ground between having to use these shirts as simply a raw source for reclaimable fabric and a garment that just isn’t wearable any more.

If it’s really too long it’s pretty easy to shorten all the way around and I usually add a short (3″) opening at sides. Sometimes when a shirt is too big the collar seems over-large so I cut just the top part of the collar off; just above seam for the piece about 3/4 inches wide that goes all the way around and has the top button in it. Then pull on threads to get as many out as possible, after washing may need to pull loose threads more and cut them.

Also, if you’re dealing with any short sleeve shirts I’ve found that a combination of the new side seam and shortening the sleeves keeps the shirt from looking too large and sloppy.

It doesn’t address the fit issue but is a more cosmetic change. Good luck!