Armpit gussets tutorial for Aunt Nancy

Hi, fellow residents of style-blogging land. Sorry for my long absence. And this post isn't going to seem like much of a return. I still take photos of favorite ensembles occasionally, but I have so many dozens of outfits waiting to be blog-shared that I'm sure I'll never get to most of them. Other stuff in life has simply taken precedence. BUT I WILL RETURN TO BLOGGING THIS SUMMER!!! I'll have much more "me" time over the coming summer months than I have had in a number of years, so if I can't manage to fit blogging back into my life this summer, then I probably never will.

So, I was going to e-mail my Aunt Nancy these photos with explanations, but I realized it would be easier to share them in a blog-post format. She was talking about how she often encounters arm-lifting problems in garments she makes with set-in sleeves, so I said I'd share a solution I often use for that problem. I insert little bias-cut football-shaped gussets into the bottom of the armscyes. They aren't very pretty up-close, and they are a bitch to sew, especially when you're figuring out how to insert them for your first time. But they usually hide fairly well, and they can make a world of difference in terms of comfort and movement-capacity.

I apologize in advance for the poor photo quality. I took these with my iphone and mailed them to myself so that I could get this post up right away.

So take, for example, this leg-o-mutton-sleeved bodice:


Here is what the underarm looks like with the gusset in place:


And here is a view from the side seam:

I hope you can make sense of this shot. I lifted the arm all the way up and back, and folded the bodice in such a way that you're looking directly at the side seam, so you can see how the gusset is inserted horizontally between the bodice and the sleeve.

Here are some sample armpit gusset patterns:


Note the grainline: not horizontal, not vertical, but on a 45-degree angle so that it's cut on the bias. I was taught that this helps with stretch in that area.

The length and width of the gusset is something I always just guess at. Basically, you want it to be as big as it needs to be to get the job done, but not much bigger than that, because the larger it is, the more it might show. Sometimes, I'll simply go ahead and attach the sleeve before a fitting but leave about 6" under the armpit unattached, and then I'll decide in the fitting how long and how wide I want the gusset to be.

I also occasionally use another solution, that of actually modifying the sleeve and bodice pattern pieces so that the gusset allowance is built into them, so you don't end up with an ugly wedge-shape in your armpit. But it's too hard to explain that method here. And I find sewing them much more difficult, and then if they don't work, it's not simply a matter of taking them out and putting in new ones. I basically only use that solution if a designer insists that they don't want the football kind.

Gussets are wonderful little tools. A gusset inserted vertically into a bodice's side seam - at about the same level or a bit lower than this one, but up-and-down instead of side-to-side, and perhaps shaped more long and narrow than these examples - can make it fit an actress whose bust is just a bit too large for it. I have also used them in crotch seams: from front to back in order to give a performer more freedom of movement and prevent them from splitting their crotch seam in performance; or horizontally from side to side in order to ease "package issues" if a male performer has a particularly large front bulge and his pants aren't laying smoothly over it. That's one of those things we'll notice in a dress rehearsal, change it in time for the next run of the show, and just hope the performer doesn't notice it and ask about so we don't have to explain that their package was distracting because it was bulging too much. There are lots of other applications for gussets of all shapes and sizes, but I'll stop here.

I hope you get to try this sometime, Aunt Nancy. I want to see how it works out if you do!