Everything You Need to Know about Dart Manipulation

Video Transcript

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Okay, so rather than starting out by talking about dart manipulation, let me start out by showing you 48 examples of the outcome of dart manipulation in the bodice front, and that's 48 examples in only 26 seconds.

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So what is dart manipulation? Hopefully you understood by that visual that it is about moving darts. But why do we move darts and how do we move darts? Well in this video I'll break that all down for you and show you how it works step by step. But before we dive in, let me introduce myself in case this is your first time here.

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My name is Maria, and I started drafting patterns at the age of 40. And like many people with nonstandard figures, I struggled trying to get a well-fitting bodice block. None of the systems that I tried worked for me, and the outcome of that was I ended up creating my own bodice block drafting system. So these days I make most of my own clothes and I draft all of my own sewing patterns, mainly dresses because I love the comfort of dresses.

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That's me. So now let's get back to manipulating darts.

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Let's start with the basics. What is a dart? A dart is a wedge shaped section of fabric that is closed to allow the garment to follow the curves of the body. Here is my dressmaker's dummy Didi, wearing a toile I made from this block that is shown. Yellow shaded sections represent darts that have been so sewn closed, allowing the flat 2D pattern to transform into a 3D shape that fits the curves of the body.

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In this video, I will concentrate mainly on the front bodice block, as that does give the most opportunities for dart manipulation, but I will touch on the bodice, back and skirt later on. This is a two dart bodice block, which I'll be using in several examples. The orange wedges represent darts. These are the areas of fabrics that will be folded and sewn closed. When closed,

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the flat pattern on the left transformed into the three dimensional shape shown on the right. Note that this block is a half block. It only shows one side of the body. In reality, the body is symmetrical, at least in theory, so the full front would include a mirrored copy of this half. But I always just use the half.

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You can see that the darts all point towards the bust, because their purpose is to shape the fabric around the curves of the bust. Darts are essential to getting a close fit from a flat piece of fabric, and they can be moved.

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So why move a dart if it's doing its job? Because while the function of the dart is shaping the location of the shaping is part of the design. So the answer in a nutshell is for design purposes. Moving darts allows for variety. For example, in this case you could do some color blocking. In this case it becomes the princess line, which can be more flattering line for larger busts and or make it easier to sew.

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Very large darts can look unflattering, and design lines make it possible to get rid of the pointy end of the dart. Now, you may notice that these all aren't actually darts, but we can turn darts into gathers, tucks, or pleats and also into design lines. And in that case they are called dart equivalents because they serve the same shaping function, just in a different form.

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So it's still dart manipulation because you are manipulating a dart and turning it into a dart equivalent that is acting the same way as the dart, just in a different form. Now, when done correctly, moving a dart doesn't change the fit, just the appearance and construction. So looking for a minute just at the right hand side. The actual fit of this garment is not changing at all.

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They are exactly the same. Same amount of ease. Same basic outline. All that's changing is the design.

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When you move a dart to another place around the block. The date width changes. But why? To help visualize how darts work. Imagine the bust shaping as a cone with a bust point at the tip. The circle here shows the base of that cone, and the bust point is at the center. A dart is like a wedge cut out of that cone.

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When you close that, which you get the shaping needed for the bus. So if you're moving the side-seam dart. And here I'm moving the side seam dart into the shoulder. The wedge amount remains same. But since the shoulder line is out further away from the bust point, the dart width will be wider. Where the block edge is furthest from the bust point, the dart will be wider.

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If it's closer to the bust point, the Dart width is smaller. Here all the colored shapes you see are the same size wedge. The wedge that is needed for this particular breast shape. When you manipulate that side seam dart around the block, the dart width will be larger the further away you get from the bust point and the dart width will be smaller the closer you get to the bust point.

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There are two methods for manipulating darts pivoting and cutting and spreading. I'll start with pivoting and show you an example. This method is clean, fast, and ideal when working directly from your block when you can work directly from your block. You're not cutting anything, just rotating around a point. I'm going to move the side seam into the shoulder.

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So this line drawn here will be one leg of the new shoulder dart. Starting from there, I will trace around the block in a clockwise direction around the neckline, down the center front, around the waist, up the side seam until I get to the first dart leg. I will stop tracing the block. Hold the block down at the bust point.

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That is the pivot point, and I'll close the dart by rotating the block in an anti clockwise direction. Then continue tracing from that point to the shoulder point where I started. When I remove the block I have to finish drawing in the dart legs, etc..

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The second method is the cut and spread method. This means physically cutting the pattern, cutting along two lines, and closing one dart. The result of which is another dart is opened. Using the same design example. I will move the side same dart into the shoulder, but this time cutting and spreading. As you don't want to cut your block up, you first need to trace your block onto paper.

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That's already been done. This white outline is the block traced onto paper. I will draw in the dart leg from the bust point to the shoulder. I will cut along that line and I will cut along the top side seam dart leg, leaving a hinge at the bust point. When I close the side seam dart, the shoulder dart will open and I will need to put paper underneath and tape it down to secure it.

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So when do you use which method? Which one should you use? Partly preference, but only partly. If you can do the manipulation in the process of tracing your block. You can if you wish. Once you have traced the block and further dart manipulation is required, then you obviously have to cut and spread. So for example, you might actually pivot the side seam into the shoulder and you trace that off.

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But then you have to put in a Gape Dart after you've lowered the neckline, in that case, you then have to cut and spread.

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So now I'll go through three more examples of dart manipulation. In example one, I'll use the pivoting method. So pivoting to create this design, moving the side seam dart into the center front neck point. I will draw the line from the bust point to the center front neck - just so you can see what we're doing. You don't really need to draw that line on the block, but I'm doing it for clarity here.

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I'll trace around from that point. Center front, Nick down the center front around to the first dart leg. Then I'll pivot the block to close the dart. Continue tracing and take the block away. Then I need to finish drawing in the darts.

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So what we've covered so far is considered simple dart manipulation. There is more complex manipulation, and the two designs I'm going to show you next are more complex. So example number two in this design what we have is three parallel darts. And I'm using the pivoting method here. But at this point I mentioned that I'm using a one dart in the waist block rather than the two block I've used so far.

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It's just simpler in this case. And I do have one block which I use sometimes rather than the two dart block. So when you have parallel darts, when you think about it, they cannot all be pointing to this point, because in that case they will not be parallel. They'll all end up at the same point. And that's not parallel.

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So in this case, what I need to do is draw a circle around the bust point, because what I'm going to do is create three different pivot points. So the radius of the circle around the bust point is one inch or 2.5cm no larger than that, because then the dart points are getting too far away from the bust point.

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So on one side of that circle, pivot point one the bust point as pivot point two and the other side is pivot point three. So now I'll be using each of those pivot points to close and open a third of the waist dart and move those thirds into the shoulder to create three parallel darts. So I need to draw in the three parallel lines to the shoulder from the pivot points.

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And also I need to divide the waist out into three portions as well. So then I trace from the first new dart leg in the shoulder around to the waist dart. Now I have to use the first pivot point to pivot the dart closed and close only one third then trace that little bit. Close another third of the waist dart and trace that bit with the second pivot point and then using the third pivot point, close the final third, then continue tracing.

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And when I lift up the dart I have this. And then I finish drawing in those dart legs in the shoulder.

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So example number three I will be using both pivoting and cutting and spreading for this design. This is considered complex because it's an asymmetric design and there are a few steps. So I will start by pivoting. I will be using the two dart block and pivoting the waist dart into the side seam. Now that's considered simple manipulation. I won't go through that part again step by step.

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I've already done that a couple of times, that straight forward. So after I've done that step, this is what I have. After I've pivoted the waist dart into the side seam. And now I need a full block. I can't create this design on the half block. So if you look at the design you'll see it's not symmetrical. So a half pattern will not work.

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So I need to repeat what I did on the flip side. And I can redo the pivoting if I want. Or if you don't want to repeat the process you can fold the paper along the center front line and use a tracing wheel to get a mirror image of the other side. So then I'll draw the lines as shown.

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You can see that those two lines are as per the design on the right hand side. And I'll start by cutting the top line, the green line, and closing the side seam. On the left hand side, then cutting along the pink line and closing the other side seam dart. And that's the final pattern. But just note the pattern on the last two slides are smaller.

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They are not to scale as the other slides were. I had to reduce the size to fit on the available screen. Real estate. So there you go. There's two examples of complex manipulation.

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So my focus has predominantly been on the bodice front because that gives more options for dart manipulation. But you can do dart manipulation wherever there are darts. Here is a dart manipulation in the skirt. When you close the dart in the waist of the skirt to add flare to the hem. Now the same concept of the wedge applies here as well.

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So dart manipulation is often used in the skirt to add flare to the hem area. You could also manipulate the waist darts of the skirt into a yoke line. Now I don't have an example here of that, but the same thing applies to the bodice back. You can manipulate the shoulder dart into a yoke line, and there's lots of other manipulation you can do with the bodice back.

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You can experiment with manipulating any dart any where

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So second to last thing, if you've reached this point, please like and subscribe if you want more content, liking and subscribing will help the algorithm. Now the last thing I will be offering a custom bodice block making service soon. I'm working on the details. I need to update the measurements video and build a page with the details of the service and the price, etc. but if you're interested.

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Come back towards the end of June and I'll put a link in the description field below this video. So thanks and ciao!

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It's an easy.