 Hi you guys! Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside the Hymn. We are starting with this basic knit t-shirt tank top situation happening here, simplicity 8016 that I am going to lengthen into a dress, scoop out the neckline and add a henley for a really fun kind of casual shirt dress situation. And I'm going to do all of these alterations with all of the wonderful products provided to us from Stitch Buzz. So we're going to be using all of these things today, which might seem like overkill. Well, let's get into it. I'll show you what we need for what, when, where, and all of that great stuff. So I have simply traced off the front bodice pattern piece. I extended it by 10 inches and then trued it up by connecting the top of the seam here with the hem creating a beautiful kind of like trapeze dress situation. So this is the center front and now I need to scoop out my neckline. This dotted line here or dashed line here was the original neckline. So using the curvy ruler, if you happen to have the seam allowance ruler, you can also use that but the curvy ruler is really intended for this specific alteration and a bunch of other ones. I'm going to have more information on the curvy ruler. It's going to get its whole video. I'm going to show you all kinds of different alterations that this one ruler can do. But for today, we're going to be using it to lower and scoop out our neckline. I'm going to get a marker that you guys can see better. Okay. And so here is our original neckline. And as you can see, the original design has kind of like a higher collar hitting right at the collar bones and we are going to lower it probably close to where this little inset ends. I measured it on myself and for reference, it is roughly four inches lower than the original pattern piece. So what I like to do is take the curvy ruler and just kind of start scooting it around to where it matches up relatively well with the original neckline, something like that. It's not going to be perfect. And then take that and just kind of gently scoot it down to where you want your mark to be and then rotate it back to match the high point shoulder. So now we've got a beautiful new scooped out neckline that is going to look something like this. You can see it's a little bit longer than it is wide. So it's going to create like a beautiful like U shaped neckline, which I think will be really, really gorgeous. Obviously, you can do all kinds of stuff. You don't have to lower it that much. You don't have to make it this scoopy. You can make it less scoopy. Scoopy is that a word? You can do all kinds of stuff with the ruler like this that has this beautiful French curve on it. But I wanted mine to be this low. So I think that'll make for a really beautiful Henley design whenever we are done. And I like a really beautiful neckline showing. So that's what I'm going to go with. Okay, so the next step that we need to do with the pattern pieces themselves before we get the fabric cut out is we need to measure the sewing line. So because I changed the shape of the neckline, this line here is longer than this line here. So the band that came with the pattern is going to be too short. I need to draft a new band that is going to fit this line here. So the best way to do that is to take your seam allowance ruler. And again, this thing is a dream because all you do is line it up around your pattern piece like so. And the width of the ruler is five eighths of an inch. So you can just keep scooping it around like so and draw in your cut your this is your cutting line and this is your stitching line. And then you need to do one more cutting or sewing line stitching line and that is along the shoulder. And that's just so you know where that shoulder seam intersects. And this is on the center front. So we don't have to this on the fold. So we don't have to worry about doing the seam allowance here. If you're using a pattern that does have a center front seam, I mean, I would consider removing that for a Henley. But if you're just looking at this tutorial for the neckline, then you would need to put in your seam allowance there too. And we're going to measure from the center front all the way around to this shoulder seam here using our trusty curve runner. So basically this is like a rotary that has measurements all the way around the circle, making it super easy to measure around curves. Obviously you can take your measuring tape if you want, but this makes it a breeze and it's a lot more accurate, which I think is nice too. Okay, so you just place the zero right on that center front. And you start running it around staying on that stitching line and stopping. And I'm getting amazingly, I mean, 10 and one sixteenth of an inch. So we take our little notebook. We've got 10 and one sixteenth of an inch. And we need so because this is a knit pattern, the knit band is going to have some stretch to it. So if we measured out the band to be exactly this length, then it would be too big. And it wouldn't pull the garment toward the body. The band on a knit garment needs to be a little bit smaller than the actual stitching line just to kind of pull everything together. So the general rule is to do 85 percent of this measurement. And just to help keep my math simple, I'm going to remove this sixteenth of an inch, chalk that up to, I don't know, turn of cloth or something. So 85 percent of 10 is 8.5 inches. So that's how long my front band is going to be. Now we need to do this exact same, not lowering the neckline of the back, but we do need to do the seam allowance measurement for the back pieces as well. So we can get a full measurement of the entire circumference of the neckline. Okay, so here is my back piece. Again, you can see where I extended it by 10 inches to make it a dress length. And we're going to do the same situation here with all of the measuring of the neckline. So 4.4 and 7 eighths is going to be like our rounded number. Okay, so now we add these two together, your front and your back, and you get 13 and 3 eighths. Perfect. So now our neck band is going to be 13 and 3 eighths inches long. Perfect. We need to draft a pattern piece for that, which is super simple. It's going to be 13 and 3 eighths by two inches. So just a nice long rectangle, two inches long, I mean, sorry, two inches wide by 13 and 3 eighths inches long. Okay. And voila, we have our neckband. But you might have noticed I only measured half of the neckline. So this is only one half of our neckband. So we have to put it on the fold to make a ultimately a neckband that is twice as long as this guy here. And then I can put in simplicity 8016 lowered neckline band just so I remember what all I've done here. And then if you want to go even a step further, you can take your measurements that you've done here. So the 10 inch mark, for example, and you can measure 10 inches from the center front, which is going to, this fold is going to be on the center back. And this other one is going to be center front. And so you can take this measure 10 inches and put a triangle here. And that is going to denote the shoulder seam. Because if you are stretching the neckband, you can tell I've got a much lower longer neckband on the front than I do in the back, you can tell by these measurements. One is 10 inches long and the other is 5.75 inches long. So you can't say when you're stretching the neckband around, you want to have more space, you're not necessarily going to divide this into fourths. If you have a beautifully symmetrical neckband and these two numbers are closer to each other, by all means, just divide it into quarters and call it a day. But I am going to do the proper pattern markings. And truthfully, this should this triangle should be closer to the seam allowance. So let's just do it all the right way. So 10 inches by 5 eighths of an inch puts us right here. So draw in our triangle, something like that. I don't know. Okay, you can do whatever way you want. Just mark where the shoulder seam should be. And you can even write shoulder. And then this would be center front. And then this would be center back. And that way you have it all marked. So if you ever come back to this again, you'll know what's up. Okay, so one quick thing that I do want to clarify is I am going to be adding a Henley placket to the center front of my dress. That is why the center front is on this edge here and the center back is on the fold. If you are doing this for a neckline that's completely in the round, meaning there's no opening in the front and no opening in the back, you would need to put the center front on the fold. And then you would need to add your 5 eighths seam allowances to the center back. As you go to stitch that up, you'll be placing the center front, the one that's on the fold along the front of your neckline. So there's going to be no seam in your band. And then the center back will have a seam. So for that seam, you have to give yourself a seam allowance. I hope that makes sense. So this is very specific to adding a Henley. But if you were going to do it for something in the round, you just kind of flip the fold line to the center front and add seam allowances to the center back to ensure that you can get it a complete round circle to add to your completely rounded neckline, closed rounded neckline. And just like that, that is how you are able to redraft a neckline on a knit garment, whether that's a top, a dress, a jacket, whatever it is, you can lower your neckline and have a shaped neckline exactly how you want it. This is our finished little Henley. I do have a discount code for Stitch Buzz. So be sure to check the description box, get a link to her site, use the coupon code. It's good for all of her products. So if you wanted any of these things, you could use the coupon code on any of them, which is really, really great and super generous. That's going to do it for me today. I will see you all very, very soon. Bye!