Last May, I told you about my chance to try on the Carissa Rose Justina shirt here, where you can see what a size LR looks like on a 5’3″ woman who wears a 34G (Prima Dona) or a 34FF (Fantasie) bra.* Soon after my own shirt arrived in the mail, I took it to the Miracle Worker that I wrote about yesterday. After she finished pinning it, I couldn’t wait to get it back.

Unfortunately, I was still waiting two months later, and I’m now searching for another tailor to finish the project. In the past I’ve written about searching for the Perfect Tee Shirt. Now you can look for posts about searching for the Perfect Tailor!

From the pictures below, it looks like it may not be entirely necessary to follow through with these alterations. The shirt on the left looks pretty good, and the shirt on the right doesn’t look that much better in its pinned state. However, after yesterday’s post, I’ve been bitten by the alterations bug. This shirt will be one of my favorites after I make the alterations that I describe after the jump.

Instead of taking it in at the waist, my insightful former tailor was going to take in each of the front princess seams by half an inch.

She would have shortened the arms by 2 inches, the back by 3.5 inches and the front by 2.5 inches. You can also see below that she was going to narrow each sleeve barrel by around a half inch.

Sigh. I’ll keep you posted on my search and show you pictures when my mission is accomplished!

*You can see Carissa Rose shirts on other real women here.

These pictures speak for themselves: A good tailor can make all the difference in the world. Read my complete “before” review here, and my “after” review below.

The main changes you’ll notice in front are that we

• lopped off the dreadfully fitting sleeves
• shortened the length (simultaneously getting rid of the weird skirt-like sides) and
• took in the waist.

My favorite change is in the back. See what we–okay, what she–did after the jump.

When the tailor took in the waist, she

• took out the side seam
• folded up the excess fabric in the back, creating a seam across the back and carefully matching the darts,
• and then sewed the newly shortened back sides to the front.

Although you can see the seam across the back, I think it looks much better than the folds of extra fabric that, instead of hiding my back flab, added to it.

Last but not least, here’s the side view, which reveals the only negative: the side dart placement that I pointed out in my original review. My tailor would have had to reconstruct the entire shirt to make a difference here, and we agreed that it wasn’t worth the cost.

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However, the rest of the alterations were definitely worth it. They cost a total of $35, bringing the total price of the shirt to $70 (not including shipping). I’m sure it made a difference that I began with a shirt that was constructed for my figure. Next up, I’ll show you the planned alterations to my Carissa Rose Justina shirt!