Oversized to fitted shirt refashion

I made this style arc arch about a year ago. The pattern is a cropped oversized shirt, I lengthened it to a normal shirt length. It's really nice liberty fabric but I ended up not wearing it much because it felt a bit shapeless and too boxy.

So I made an attempt to tailor it, and I think it's worked out pretty nicely. I didn't want to take it apart, and I didn't take any measurements, I just added progressively more alternations until it fit how I wanted it to. 

Here's what I ended up with:

• Four diamond darts of 4cms each across the front

• 6cms taken out of the side and the top of of the underarm seam, graded to nothing at the bottom of the shirt, and the biceps

• Two really long diamond darts of 5cms on the back

I initially had planned to put some darts in the sleeves too, but I didn't really know where to put them on the arm, or how long to make them, so I ended up just shortening the sleeves instead. Overall I found the sleeves/shoulders the hardest, it’s drop shoulder and I didn't want to accidentally make it too tight. I guess I need to actually look up some sleeve techniques.

I'm kind of amazed this has 38cms taken out of it at the narrowest, and doesn't look all that different! But it does feel more flattering*, so it's done its job and hopefully I'll be wearing this more from now on!

* there is a lot of hating on the word flattering in general, which I do get, but in this case that's what the problem was. There was nothing wrong with the shirt initially, it wasn't uncomfortable or so large it got in the way of anything, I just wasn't wearing it because I didn't like the way it made me look.