This is my fourth pirate shirt (yes, I have a problem) and it is more or less patterned after the second one I made (link is coming!). But. The body width on this shirt ended up about 1” narrower than on my brown shirt, and I don’t like how it feels on my hips.

One modification I made is that I cut out tiny longish triangles from the neck before I put the collar on. I am hoping that it lays in a more relaxed fashion under the pirate chin.

I have a 38” shirt and I want it to be at least 40” at the hips. I want some swoosh. I could cut the thing from chin to chaps and insert a strip of linen the desired width, but I sort of already did that on my first pirate shirt.

Instead, I could make a triangle that is about 6” at the base, and sew it into the sides of the shirt (after removing my beautifully felled side seams).

So I will need to be sure to give myself plenty of spare fabric.

I get to pull thread, yay, and make some rectangles.

I have about 14” from the bottom of my arm gusset to the bottom of the shirt, so I will make my rectangles 12” high (and 8”
wide).

I will make them into isosceles triangles by marking the midpoint at the top, drawing a line from said midpoint to each bottom corner, and cutting.

I will pin the long sides of each triangle to the sides of the shirt, and I will figure out how to deal with the top point when I get to that part.

I can use these for another godet project or when I need scraps, which happens regularly.

I already felled the side seams to the back, so at first I tried to unpick the stitches. No way. So I am cutting the seams as close to the fold as possible. The back of the shirt will be about 1/4” narrower than the front, but all that extra new material should hide the difference.

The top of the opening is flat, not pointed, so I will fold my inserted fabric to match it.

Take away the seam allowance, and I will have about 2” between the underarm gusset and my new godet. That should leave plenty of room for movement.

You can see that the top point of the godet is folded down. I will probably end up cutting a bunch of it off, but will wait until I get things sewed up.

I folded and pinned the very top from the right side, but I pinned the rest from the wrong side.

It doesn’t look too bad! I am a bit concerned about the top part, but felling hides a multitude of seams. And I can always put a patch over it if necessary.

I sewed most of the seams from the inside . . .

I will whipstitch this down from the right side, doing my best to make it look even.

I rolled the seams toward the inside of the godet, hoping the better to hide that top business. It worked pretty well.

This is looking good. I just need to even out the bottom and then hem it.

I like it when the back of my shirt hangs a bit low, so this will be a good time to make that happen. Very subtle!

It is a fact when sewing a curved hem that there will be more fabric below than above, and we will inevitably run into these minor bulges.

Dealing with the extra fabric comes in during the sewing; I just ease the extra fabric in as well as I can. This is an advantage, for me at least, of hand- versus machine-sewing. I feel that I have more control over what happens in these situations.

All I need to do is reinforce the weak spots and make some buttonholes, and this one will be all done!