The Basics of Darts

Get ready for the basics of darts. In this basics video, I'm going to show you three basic darts and how to drape them, how to fold them. All right. The first one is the waist bust dart. See, it goes from the waist to the bust. Okay. Now I have my basic bodice right here. I've draped it. I pinned the front shoulder, everything. And look what I'm left with. Oh, hello. What's this going to become? A dart. How do we do it? Okay. Now, smooth drape. Come to the waist. See right here at the waist? What you want to do is find the princess. The princess is right here in the middle. It cuts the body right here. All right. Find it. Smooth this over and pin. And now get your pencil or Sharpie and mark. Mark with an L right here at the waist. Now you can mark the rest of the waist just like that. All right. Mark right there at the first one. That's going to become your first dart leg. All right. Now turn this to the side and then do the same thing for the second dart leg. All right. Smooth it over. Smooth it over. And find the princess. There's the princess right there. And pin. Okay. Then mark right at the waist. And that's going to be your second dart leg right there. All right. So basically, that's it. That's your dart. So now, how do you fold it? What do you do? I don't know. Well, I'm going to show you. All right. What you want to do is you want to take the first dart leg, the one that's closest to the waist, and you want to take that and you want to have that dart leg kiss the other dart leg. Okay. So then you fold it, fold it, fold it, and find the other one. And there it is. Hi. We're kissing. See? Kissing dart leg cousins. Right there. And then pin. There we are. That's it. All right. Now if I left it at that, we've got, what do we have here? We have a pleat. But we don't want a pleat. All right. So I'm going to just pin it to make it a dart. Okay. Now you can go to my basics of pinning video to know how to do that. But just basically just go up and down. I'm going to pin this dart just like that. See? Look. Hi. Hi. Okay. And then I'm going to do it again here. Turn it over and then pin and then just pin and pin. Okay. Nice. Oh, look at that. Oh. All right. So that's one method. Another way of doing it is just take these out, take these out, take this out, take this out, and then just grab your dart, grab the two dart legs from here and to the other one, and pinch them. And then pin. Just pin like that. Pin like this. And pin up. Pin up. See? You fold it. See? Now I'm going to show you the other side. See? The other side. And then there's this side. All right. And so just keep pinning, pinning up until about the apex. What's the apex? The highest point of the bust. And there we are. That's your bust. So the last thing you want to do is just mark it. All right. So you mark it with a broken line. All right. Right here. And then do the other side. See? Just like that. I'm going to show you. So just mark, mark, mark, mark, mark, mark, and go up to the apex. And guess what, guys? That was the waist bust dart. Okay. Next up is the side bust dart. It goes on the side. All right. Kind of looks like this. Now there's kind of two side bust darts. There is one that is really a side bust dart. And then there's a French dart. They call it the French dart. And it comes from here more at an angle. All right. First, you've got your basic drape. I've got it pinned right here on the top. And then what you want to do is just smooth and drape the waist so it's flat. There's no dart, nothing here at the waist. Why? Because all the excess will be put right here to the side. See how it's already creating the excess right here? So you've draped, you drape. See? Excess. And then drape, drape, drape. Smooth to the side seam right here, right there in the armhole and pin. So guess what you got left? All this. What happens to it? You fold it. You create a dart. All right. Here's your bust dart. What do you do? Well, this is where you become creative. This is where you kind of become the designer. So I like to do it a little bit at an angle. And I look, look, look, look. I just pinch it. That's all you have to do. There's really no specific technique. I just pinch it just like that slightly in an angle. Now, if you did it like that, that's perfectly fine. You can also then look, you can do it a little lower and that becomes more of what they call the French dart, the dart a la Francaise. Okay. Now I'm just going to do the basic one. Just smooth, smooth, smooth. All right. Smooth. Okay. Beautiful. And then pin. Pin at the side seam, just like that. See? Just smooth and pin, smooth and pin. All right. With the excess, pin the excess right here. All right. Pin the excess. Make sure the ball's here and the pointy part is out. So just pin, pin. All right. And then just keep pinning until you get to the apex area. All right. All right. Now you don't have to get right to the apex. Notice my dart kind of ends about an inch away from the apex. Because if you want to end right here, it ends up looking like torpedo boobs. Okay. Kind of like Madonna. You don't want that. All right. You want it to look just like that. And then finally you just mark. See? Look, quickly, little marking, marking, marking, marking to there. Mark, mark, mark, mark, mark. I'm just going to mark the side seam so you guys can see right there. Mark, mark, mark. And well, guess what? There is your side bust dart. Hello. Okay. Now I'm going to show you how to do the shoulder dart, but this is also going to be the shoulder and the waist dart at the same time. You spread the darting around kind of. All right. First things first is you mark your center front grain line and then you mark a cross grain line. Where are you going to put that cross grain? Right here across the bust. See? I've already marked it with the red tape. So just lay it, drape it, make sure that this line is parallel to the floor. It's very important. All right. When you're doing a shoulder and a waist dart. All right. And then just pin. Just as easy as that. Guess what now? Look what I've got. Access. For what? Darting. Okay. So then just pin like this. And now I've got this right here. Pin right here. And then look, look, look, look what happens. See? I get my shoulder dart. All right. So now, quickly, I'm just going to do this because we've already done the bust waist dart right there. Here we go. See? Done. Done. But guess what? What do I do about a shoulder dart? How do I drape it? Easy. Smooth over to the princess seam. Smooth over to the princess seam and pin. Now, what do you do? You mark. You mark on the princess seam. Just put a little L. Okay. Just put a little L right there. And then guess what? You take this and look. The excess. Now smooth it over to the princess. You want to smooth it. Kind of walk it over. Don't force it. All right. You don't want to force it. So just walk it over, walk it over until you get that excess. And this has to be smooth. Look. Smooth. Nice and smooth. You get that excess. Okay. See? Just like that. All right. Don't force it. You want to make sure it just kind of folds over the shoulder. And that is it. All right. And then pin. So I'm just going to pin right there. I'm going to pin at the shoulder. Look at that. Okay. I'm going to show you sideways. Look. See? That's what I'm pinning right there. Okay. And that is my shoulder dart. And once again, this shoulder dart starts right here at the shoulder. This is the excess. See? So you guys can see. And then it goes to the apex. But not exactly to the apex. You end about, again, about an inch away from the apex. That's it. See? So from here to nothing. And I'm just going to show you quickly marking it. So you mark, mark, mark, mark, mark, mark. And then it goes to nothing. Just like nothing, nothing. And then mark, mark, mark, mark, mark to the waist. Mark here to the waist. And don't forget to mark the other side of your dart right here. Like that. And there you are. You've got shoulder dart, waist dart. You spread the dart love. Now that you know the basics of darts, make sure to like, subscribe and share. And don't forget, get my book, A Passion for Fashion. It's available where? On Amazon.com.