Just over a year ago, I made a shirt with a vintage pattern I'd used about nine years before.
When I first finished the shirt, I was so distracted by the way my overall sewing improvements, in the nearly-decade since making it before, meant that was now aware of how much the pattern itself is...not the most advanced. And that distracted me from noticing how the bust darts were way too high.
I put the shirt in the sewing room to work on, but I didn't want to calculate how much to lower the darts. Today I finally picked out the darts and the side seam a distance about twice the unfolded end of the darts. I gathered the front to fit the back, fiddled around with attempting to press out at least some of the fullness, then sewed everything back together.
I wasn't able to shrink out all of the fullness, so some gathers did get stitched in place
It's far from perfect, but that applies to the whole shirt,and, as always: it's fine/nobody better get close enough to notice.
