Alterations for a Changing Body Shape

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Expanding a garment:

The Shape of Gussets:

Expanding Basic Pants:

Expanding Tunics and Basic Dresses:

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This page discusses

pregnancy, weight loss

and weight gain.

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Throughout our lives, our body changes shape and size many times. The most obvious times are as we age during our first eighteen years, but even once we’ve reached our mature height and size, our body will continue to change for a myriad of reasons. This has been the case for all of humanity's existence. In our modern world, finding clothing to fit our changing bodies is a bit more straightforward than it would have been before cloth production was industrialized. The acts of spinning fiber, weaving it into cloth, cutting it to shape and sewing it into clothing represented a huge amount of labor. For most people during Period, a changing body shape or size did not mean buying new clothes. It meant altering the clothing you had to accommodate your body.

For SCAdians, when your body changes size, you may want to just start over with new garb. I have done this before (a couple of times actually). But you may be at a place where replacing your wardrobe isn’t an option for time or monetary reasons, or you just don’t want to abandon the garb you’ve assembled. There are lots of reasons a person may chose to alter their garb rather than donate and buy or make new.

As I have had children, my body shape has changed and as my material resource availability has changed, my garb has as well. The first Viking Age garb I made was out of muslin cotton and quilting cotton, because that was what I could afford. The very low resolution picture to the right is of me wearing my second apron. I can look at that picture and see that my straps were too long and I needed a better belt, but it was an early attempt and I have nothing but love for that kid in the picture, trying her best and having a good time. And I still love that shade of pink.

As I got older and decided I did, in fact, want to play in the Viking Age, I began to assemble a wardrobe made of more period correct fibers: linen, silk and wool, all of which amount to a significant monetary investment. I make all of my garb myself, so it also represents a pretty significant time investment.

This investment in garb was also during a time when I was having children, so my body shape was changing drastically during those years. The picture from Mudthaw, noted on the caption, is equidistant between my pregnancies. I had lost weight from my first pregnancy, but not so much as to fit into my old cotton garb. I would gain and lose weight again during and after my next pregnancy in 2016. Some of my garb that I made between pregnancies was loose enough that it still fit after my second pregnancy. Most of it needed to be altered to add room in the bust, arms and hips. Some of it I just retired or gave away and made new.

I conservatively estimate that, only looking at garb I made for myself, I have made in the neighborhood of twenty underdresses and a dozen aprons over the years. Many of those I have given away but my core wardrobe currently is one that has been years in the making. When I had weight loss surgery (WLS) in 2021, I really did not want to re-make my wardrobe again.

Taking a garment in, or making it smaller, is generally easier than “letting it out” or making it larger. Subtracting is usually easier than adding, since you don't have to try to find additional material to add to a garment when you're making it smaller.

The picture from Ducal Challenge 2022, again noted in the caption, shows two of my favorite pieces of garb fitting me terribly. I have since altered them to fit my body better, which also means they are more comfortable to wear.

The most useful alterations are ones that do not permanently alter the base garment but which allow it to be drawn in or enlarged as needed.

I will never be pregnant again, but statistically I can expect some re-gain of weight from my WLS at some point. There is no hard and fast rule for when a person's body might change shape. It's reasonable to want to alter a garment to fit you now, at whatever size you are. Again, I want to stress that it is extremely normal and even healthy for a body to change shape and size during a person's life. Certainly there are unhealthy reasons that might happen, but there are healthy reasons this might happen as well. Most importantly, the change itself is morally neutral. We do the best we can to live in the bodies we have. Hopefully I can help make the process of dressing that body a little easier for you.

Expanding a garment:

The easiest way to enlarge a garment is to carefully un-sew an existing seam and insert a new piece of cloth, called a gusset, into the space to expand the garment. The trick is to make sure you have picked the correct seam to un-sew and that you have fabric that's either the same as the original garment (keep those scraps! Repairs and alterations are so much easier when you have saved your leftover scraps) or is the same weight. For example, if I have a heavy weight linen that I need to expand but I don't have a scrap in the same cloth to use for my gusset, I want to pick a cloth that is the same weight and texture to make my gusset out of. If I use a lighter weight cloth, the garment is likely to not hang or fit on the body correctly. Additionally, if the size of the scrap allows for it, I want to cut my gusset so that I make use of the bias of the cloth in order to ensure maximum flexibility in the garment.

Looking at extant finds from Greenland dating from the late Viking Age and early Medieval period, we can see where people added cloth to garments to make them fit a larger body than they were initially sewn for. This might have happened because the original wearer changed shape or because the garment was passed on to someone else.

The back of a garment found in Herjolfsnes, Greenland. You can clearly see the gusset in the arm.

When a person puts an ill-fitting garment on, we get a lot of clues as to what needs to be done to fix it. Several years ago, I was making myself a new white dress and was distracted while I was cutting and sewing and ended up with a dress that was far too tight in the bosom. I was chatting with a friend while I worked and sent her progress pictures as I discovered the problem and solved the problem.

You can see how the fabric pulls and gathers at the spot where there isn't enough space. When something fits too small, there are clues on the fabric usually in the form of little folds where the fabric is stretching and trying to fit. That's where you need to add a gusset.

Unfortunately, white doesn't show up super well, but you can see the gusset I cut to insert into the dress at my chest. The shape came about because the garment needed more room in the front rather than the back and that requirement for more room tapered off as it got to my waist. The slightly rounded triangular shape worked well and my scraps accommodated that shape for both sides. I wanted the piece to have a curved edge instead of a sharp point so that it laid nicely without any concerns about points but it did still need that slightly triangular shape to give me the space requried for my bust.

Once the same shaped gusset was added to both sides of the dress, the result was a garment that fit me appropriately through the bust. The final picture isn't as clear as the first one, but you can see the difference in the fit.

This garment no longer fits me. I will be altering it by taking it in without cutting away any of the base garment and document it in the section "Taking a Garment In"

The Shape of Gussets:

Different garments are constructed differently and so will be expanded differently too. For instance, a gusset for pants that are too tight in the hips will look different from a gusset for a dress that's too tight in the hips. But the basic principle is the same. You want to identify where the garment is stressed, if possible mark on the seam where that stress starts and ends, and then insert the appropriately sized and shaped gusset. Most of your gussets will be triangular or diamond shaped because they are going into a seam. Sometimes the triangle will be very large, like a gore in a dress or tunic, or smaller, like the gusset seen in the example above from Greenland.

Sometimes the gusset will actually be a rectangle. Pants in particular generally need a rectangle to enlarge them. For pants, there are a few places they might be too small: the waist, the crotch, the thighs or the leg length. Typically, if they're tight in the waist, they're tight in the crotch too. That isn't a hard and fast rule, but for the pants that I've had to fix, it has been the case and the fix is a rectangle that runs from the back waist to the front waist in a U shape.

Expanding Basic Pants:

Leg length is the easiest problem in pants to fix. You just sew a cuff onto the bottom and extend the length that way. For hose with feet, you need to cut the feet off, insert the additional length, then reattach the feet. Be sure to account for the seam allowances when you insert the additional length. This gets tricky when you start accounting for bias but is not impossible.

If your pants are tight through the waist, crotch and thigh, you will need a few gussets to help out. A triangle gusset that's longer than it is wide situated with the narrow point toward the knee will give the thigh room. I suggest placing this gusset on the inseam, as that's generally where the seam is for pants but if your pants are pieced or have a seam along the outside of the leg, you can put it there too. If that's the case, you can usually get away with one gusset to enlarge the waist as well as the thigh. You may still need a gusset for the crotch, but pin it up and give it a try. Sometimes loosening the thigh and waist will ease the crotch enough to be comfortable to wear.

Expanding Tunics and Basic Dresses:

For most of period, dresses were just long tunics so the tips for altering one apply to the other as well. As garments became more sophisticated and tailored to an individual's body, the process of altering became more complicated. I have never altered a later period garment and can only give the most basic advice for that, which is: look at the stress points when the garment is on, identify the closest seams and start adding fabric there. It'll be a bit trickier to make sure the overall shape of the garment is maintained but it's a good start.

For the less tailored garments of the pre- and early medieval periods in Europe, it's a bit easier to manage alterations. Below is a list of troubleshooting fit for a basic t-tunic or dress.

If the fit is tight in the...

Shoulders:

Adding an underarm gusset will add room to a garment that is tight in the shoulders. This will also add some room across the chest and mid-back. These gussets are diamond shaped and sized according to how much room is needed.

Upper back:

My recommendation is to insert underarm gussets first and see if that solves the shoulder tightness. Another option to try before cutting into the body of the tunic is to add strips of fabric along the body, starting at the underarm. The easiest way to approach this is to use two pieces but if you're comfortable with the process, you can use one large piece. The first piece (or top of the big piece) is shaped mostly like a standard underarm gusset, but rather than diamand shaped, it's triangular. The bottom of the triangle should be the width of the strip you're adding down the length of the tunic. The picture to the right illustrates the general shape of this gusset. You will need to do one on both sides of the garment. This will add fabric to the bottom of the garment but generally that's not an issue. If for some reason it is, slowly taper the rectangle down to make it smaller. If it doesn't, you can then add the midback gusset. I like to avoid these because they're easy to mess up by getting them off center and difficult to fix once they're messed up. Most t-tunic style garments do not have a center seam, but this is where you'll want to add the gusset to expand the upper back of a garment. To insert a gusset for the upper back, you'll make a slit down the center of the back beginning just before the garment gets tight and ending just after the garment fits again. You'll want a diamond shaped gusset with rounded sides to insert. Make the length of the sides the same length as the slit and carefully insert it to give your garment more room. If you have enough fabric and are so inclined, you can do underarm gussets as well to minimize the size of the back gusset.

Arms:

When a garment is tight in the arms but not the shoulders, you can address this with one of two options: either a triangular gusset or a rectangular. If the arm is tight over the entire length of it, you might consider the rectangle. I've made drop shoulder tunics with an arm taper that was too tight before and the result was weird to wear and weird to look at. The solution was a rectangular gusset that ran the entire length of the seam with a sharp taper at the end near the shoulder. If only the upper arm is tight, you can insert a diamond gusset in the underarm seam, making sure the gusset is long enough to pass through the tight area but not so long as to make the lower part of the sleeve too bulky.

Taking a Garment In

As discussed, taking a garment in is often easier than adding room to an existing item. My method for altering garments to be smaller is one that works well for less tailored garb. I have never done this with a garment already meant to be more tailored and I cannot speak to how well it would work. I would assume that taking a tailored garment in would involve re-sewing seams to make the garment smaller, though with shaped areas, like the bust on a kirtle, that would likely involve cutting and removal and possibly reshaping if the fabric allows for it. This is untested however and I would suggest you reaching out to a sewist who has experience with altering tailored garments.

Tunics and Dresses

My favorite garment to take in is a tunic or a dress. These garments are generally not particularly tailored and there's lots of room and fabric to work with to get it to a place that works well.

Occasionally, you'll need to take the torso of the garment in without worrying about the arms. This alteration is also the first step of needing to take in the torso and the arms. To begin:

Find the center of the garment as you wear it. Bodies are three dimensional and fabric, particularly natural fibers like linen, will ease and shape itself around your body over time. Most garments needing altering have been well worn and are no longer as symmetrical as they were the first time they were put on. You want to find the center of the garment as it is worn, near the collar. With your fingers beside the collar, pull the fabric up slightly and pinch the fingers of your other hand together beside your body. Begin pulling the garment through the pinched fingers so that it's doubled up, as though you are closing a ziplock bag. Pull until the garment sits where you want it to. Pin the sides together.
From that pinned spot, take a fabric marker, or pin as you go, and move down the torso pulling more fabric or less fabric as needed. This line will not be straight and it's not absolutely crucial that it's perfect. You just want an idea of what sort of line you need to sew and how far down you'd like to go.
Sew along this line, making sure to curve if the marks or pins tell you to.
This step can be tricky, depending on how much of a curve you had in step two. You need to take the excess fabric and flatten it down so that the new seam that you sewed in step three is in the middle of this new layer. This is very much like a box pleat. I recommend pinning this in place before you sew down each side. The result should be a rectangle that covers the first seam you made and a more closely fitting garment than you started with. You have the option of sewing the rectangle down the entire length of the garment, but I've found that there's usually a natural place on the garment for the rectangle to end, like a partially sewn pleat.
This process gives you a new neckline. If you need to take in sleeves, you repeat the last process on each sleeve. Sometimes it makes sense to take in the sleeves on the underside as opposed to the top. The garment will determine which makes the most sense. You will likely have more of a triangle shape at the end of taking the sleeves in with the top point being at the shoulder then widening out to the wrist.

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