I try to keep a lightweight cardigan or overshirt in the car during the summer for those times when we're already out (running errands, going to doctor appointments, etc.) and we spontaneously decide to stop someplace to eat. Most restaurants keep their summertime air conditioning set to what feels like sub-zero, and I've reached the age where I get uncomfortable when I'm cold or sitting in a draft, so putting on an extra layer goes a long way toward keeping me content on those occasions.
We recently had a day where we were out and about, and we decided it was a good opportunity for us to eat out before heading home, except I didn't have a cardigan with me to put on in the restaurant. So, before heading to eat, we stopped at a shop and bought me this lovely lightweight denim/chambray Levi's shirt to slip on over the t-shirt I was wearing.
The shirt fit me well enough off the rack (I could button it down the front, etc.), and it kept me comfortable at the restaurant, but it was a snug fit, and I could tell that I would like the shirt even more if I added gussets for some extra ease.
So, a few days later, I searched online and found some lovely light blue floral-print chambray fabric. I ordered 1.5 meters, which was way more yardage than I needed for the gussets, but I figured that I would eventually find a use for the remaining fabric. 😂
Even though the floral fabric isn't stretch chambray (which the description says), it's exactly the color and print that I envisioned using for the gusset panels on my Levi's shirt, so I'm happy with it. (The shirt doesn't stretch, either, so it's actually better that floral fabric isn't stretchy.)
Shirt and fabric before cutting:
First, I measured the length of the side seams (from hem to cuff) to know how long the gusset strips would need to be. My shirt measured about 29 inches from hem to cuff, so I cut my gusset strips from the floral fabric about 32 inches long (to give myself plenty of length for seam allowances) by 7 inches wide.
Before cutting the shirt open along the side seams, I had to remove the cuffs. This step made me a bit nervous, because I hadn't sewn anything with nice cuffs like this before.
I used my seam ripper and worked slowly and carefully until the cuffs came free from the sleeves. I set the cuffs aside to be reattached later.
Whew!! 😅
After the cuffs were removed, I took a couple of pins and pinned the tabs (the ones that secure the sleeves when they're rolled up) out of the way inside the sleeves, to keep them safe during the shirt cutting and gusset sewing.
Then it was time to cut the shirt open along the side seams. Using my sharpest scissors, and again working slowly and carefully, I cut as close as I could on either side of the bulky side seams, removing and discarding the strips from the old seams.
The next step was to zigzag stitch along all the raw edges of the shirt and the gusset strips, to minimize fraying later.
Now it was time to start sewing the gusset strips together with the shirt.
I finger-pressed about a 3/8-inch hem along one short edge of each gusset strip and then stitched across that hem to secure it. Then I put one side of the shirt and one of the gusset strips together with right sides facing, carefully lining up the bottom edge of the shirt with the bottom (hemmed) edge of the gusset strip, then sewed the pieces together from hem to cuff using a 3/8-inch seam. I repeated that process for the other three long seams. Then I pressed the seam allowance toward the gussets and topstitched over the seam allowances to secure them.
With all that work done, the only thing left to do was to reattach the cuffs. But, of course, the sleeves were now about 6 inches bigger around than they used to be, with the added gussets. So to get the sleeves to fit the original cuffs, I stitched two rows of basting stitches in the seam allowance of the ends of the sleeves and used the basting to gather the cuffs to a size that would fit in the cuffs. I pinned the inside edge of each cuff to the corresponding sleeve and stitched along that inside edge to secure the cuff to the sleeve. Then I enclosed the raw edge of each sleeve by positioning the outside edge of the cuff in place and topstitching to finish.