All About Darts

We'd all be clad in paper bag clothes were it not for darts.

Darts put 3-D shaping into otherwise flat fabric. They allow fullness over a curve, i.e. the bust, without creating too much fullness elsewhere, i.e. the armhole. The fuller the curve, the deeper the dart must be.

Sometimes darts are disguised in seams. A well known example is the princess seam (left). A princess seam is really just a series of darts. A bust dart at the shoulder, a bust dart at the waist, then a hip dart, all connected in one long sewing line (seam).

Lesser known - darting can be incorporated into yokes. The yoke on the back of a blouse or shirt, or the yoke on the back of your jeans. The seam between the yoke and the rest of the garment is really a dart.

There are all kinds of fancy "designer" darts. The elegant French dart (ooo-la-la) extends diagonally upwards towards the bust from the waist at side seam. Check out these "Art Darts" created by a PACC colleague of mine, Ruth Ciemnoczolowski (no one can pronounce it) and featured in Threads Magazine.

Small darts can also be disguised as ease (almost invisible gathering.) Sometimes you do not want a regular sewn dart b/c it will break up the pattern of some beautiful embroidery on the fabric or interrupt the smooth flow of draping silk. I have, in those cases, turned darts into gathers at the upper front side seams or lower front armholes .

I'm sure you have also seen gathers under the bust at an empire seam or midriff band. Those are darts too. Gathers between the bust or on the front shoulder serve the same purpose. It's all about darts.