I have issues with the way unisex Crew Neck T-shirts fit. I get one every year at day camp and sometimes for other events throughout the year. They look okay on the kidlets, but I always feel like they're choking me. It doesn't help that I'm amply endowed, so I have to go up a couple sizes and that makes things fit all sorts of wonky.
So, if you're like me and you'd rather have a more comfortable V-Neck rather than a Crew Neck T-shirt, here's a relatively quick way to alter the neckline, but keep the original ribbed material.
Step 1: Get yourself a Crew Neck shirt that you'd like to alter:
Just in case you're paying attention, this shirt is not the one that gets cut up on the rest of the pictures. I totally forgot to take a "before" picture, so I stole my daughter's camp shirt for that.
Step 2: Unstitch the front of the current neckline. Stop where the shoulder seam meets the ribbing. (You can also detag the shirt if that's also an annoyance for you.) You'll also want to clean out all of the leftover thread from both the shirt edge and the ribbing. The hive-shaped end on one of my seam rippers is good at helping grab and remove those.
Step 3: Stretch that ribbing! Give it a good tug every few inches and make it longer. You don't have to be gentle. It has enough recovery that it won't stay stretched out permanently, but you will gain a few inches of usable material. Once you're happy, line up the shoulder seams, clip or pin those if necessary, and bring the ribbing straight out evenly, and cut it so the two sides are even.
Step 4: Bring the two raw edges of the neckline together to form the V by overlapping the ends.
Step 5: Lift/unfold the top layer of ribbing. Then you're going to sew two straight lines where these pins are laying so that the new collar is all one piece, but with the stitches hiding underneath.
Step 6: Cut out the two middle squares where the V forms. This will debulk the collar and make it easier to attach. You can see all 4 layers formed by the overlapping collar ends in this picture. Remove the middle two very carefully to avoid cutting into the visible top layer or the supporting back layer.
Step 7: Lay your shirt out flat and lay the V down so that you can see how much of a plunge you can safely add without causing puckers in the material. Measure from the center of the cut edge of the original neckline to a spot about 1/4" above the bottom point of the collar's V.
Little caveat here: This picture is with about 2 inches of shirt already removed. I've done this alteration on several shirts already, and I had always needed to take out 2 inches, so I just went straight to doing that. Then when I checked the new neckline, I had more space to play with. So ignore the fact that this underlying shirt is lower than the starting Crew Neck position and do the measuring as outlined above. It will probably be somewhere between 1.5" and 3.5" depending on what the shirt/ribbing is made of.
Step 8: Clip/pin your shoulder seams together and line up the curves of the original neckline so that you can cut both sides at the same time and maintain symmetry. Once you have it smoothed out, measure down the front however far your previous measurement said that you needed to go, then draw yourself a cut line that flows into the original neckline an inch or so short of the actual shoulder seam. You don't want to be cutting that close to the protected edge. If you don't have chalk, you can use a marker. The line will end up inside the seam allowance and disappear.
This picture is from when I did my original 2" cut. I used chalk to draw in my slight curve. This chalk is slightly more curved than it should be and I ended up cutting down about 1/8" more than this shows at the tip to make sure it formed a V and not a deeper U neck. Of course, then I figured out I needed another 1.5", so I had to repeat this step an extra time. You get to benefit from my experience!
Step 9: Cut along your drawn line. Depending on how deep you could cut, it might not be a very big piece, but it's still enough to get that neckline down off your windpipe.
Notice how it's got too much of a U shape? That's why I went back and trimmed just a tad more off the bottom to give it a real V before sewing.
Step 10: Pinning the center... Pin on the outside of the shirt with the ribbing on top. Line up the point of the V on the ribbing with the cut edge of the V on the shirt.
Step 11: Pinning one side: now, while holding the pin at the V and the shoulder seam, pull the two sides apart until the ribbing and the shirt are the same distance. Using some finger flexibility, figure out how to hold both of those while simultaneously pinching the center point between those two ends and pin it. Marked below by the button-headed pin. Once that one is in place, repeat the stretch between that pin and the shoulder seam to get a pin halfway between, and repeat for the distance between the center pin and the V pin. Borrow a helper if you need to. That's the only part of the pinning that is tricky.
It'll look like this:
Step 12: Repeat the whole half and quarter distance pinning thing on the opposite side of the V pin.
Step 13: Set up your machine to do a straight stitch with a medium length. (Mine is on 2.5 out of a max 4.) Position your needle and material so that when you start sewing, you'll be just slightly over the shoulder seam and will have a seam allowance of 1/8". DO NOT BACKSTITCH WHEN YOU START! You're just going to start sewing straight along that edge.
Step 14: Sew along the first side of the neck from the shoulder seam to the center point of the V. Stop with the needle down at the point that is 1/8" from either side of the V. Pick up the foot, rotate your fabric to line up a straight shot to finish the other side, then put the foot back down.
Step 15: Sew along the second side of the neck until you go 1-2 stitches past the shoulder seam. STILL DO NOT BACKSTITCH! Just pick up your needle and your foot and pull the fabric out. Trim the tails at 3" or so from the edge of the fabric. Then you're going to inspect your neck line from the outside and make sure you didn't miss any fabric. And of course, since I'm taking tutorial pictures, that's when I actually do that. You can see I missed a little chunk of the V. If that happens, just use your seam ripper to break the thread at that point and unravel the stitching back an inch or so in each direction and pull those loose threads to the same side of the seam and tie them off. Restitch the section you mangled the first time and make it better. When you're all done, check the shoulder seams to see if you need to remove a couple of stitches to get the collar to lie flat, then once you're happy, tie the tails to each other and trim them off.
Step 16: Enjoy your new V-neck shirt!
