The prime duty of a nurse is keeping her surrounding people safe, healthy and happy during her stay at the hospital.
When a nurse can do these obligations successfully while keeping her personal style up, she starts enjoying every second of her duty.
A good fitting scrub can make a nurse looks fashionable and let her be confident all over the day.
A nursing scrub is the newest edition of nursing uniform history. A nurse can do her job smoothly wearing this dress. But when this scrub is too loose or too tight, she feels awkward and can’t walk, sit or move with her natural posture. As a result, she does not enjoy her time at the hospital.
If you are a nurse, you don’t need a scrub that is thicker and taller than you or even thinner and shorter than you. In the following sections, we have discussed some strategies that can help you make your scrub fit better, and a special tip on how you can fold your scrub for storing or traveling.
How You Make Scrubs Fit Better?
To get perfectly fit scrub for your official duty, the shortest way is to buy the right size from the shop. You can also place an order to your tailor to make a scrub for yourself within a given time.
If you make you scrub following either of those two ways, hope you will get the right fit scrub. Even if accidentally you do not find your scrub fit, you can apply the following three methods for perfectly fitting.
- Make a scrub top by yourself.
- Alter your scrub top and pant.
- Shrink your scrub.
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Making A Nursing Scrub Top by Yourself
When you are making your own nursing uniform, you will have complete control and freedom to every detail measurement. As a result, your scrub will be nothing but a perfect fit. Let’s know the step by step process of making a scrub by yourself.
Step-1: Find A Scrub Top Pattern
Find a scrub top pattern. Either you buy it from a shop, it just costs a few dollars; or if you know your friend or colleague already has one, you can borrow it from her. Also, there are a good number of websites where you will get various types of scrub pattern.
However, while choosing the pattern, you are free to choose anything that you will feel comfortable to wear and easy to make as well.
Step-2: Choose the Fabric
Comfortability of your scrub depends on the softness and the nature of the fabric. So, you should choose a type of fabric that is comfortable to wear and the one you can spend all of your working hours wearing.
For color selection, choose one that you like and won’t make you out of the pack at your hospital. In this regard, you can choose the hospital friendly colors that convey the messages of caring. One important fact you have to remember is if your hospital follows a specific color for a certain group or a particular rank doctor or nurse, you must choose your color according to that guideline.
Finally, choose a fashionable yet standard shade or design. You can go for any design that makes you unique, good and trendy without violating the dress code of your workplace.
Step-3: Shaping the Scrub
Now use the scrub top pattern to cut out appropriate shapes from the fabric. After the initial cutting, you should have the following pieces: the front with a V-neck, the back with a classic circle neck, the front of each sleeve and the back of each sleeve.
When you cut the shapes from the fabric, take a slight extra part of each shape to avoid any shortage during the sewing.
Step-4: Connecting the Shaping
It’s time to connect all the shapes to get a complete scrub. Start your sewing with the front piece and back piece, place the shapes inside out next to each other. Now sew them together along the seams. After that, when you turn the top right side out, you’ll see that the seams are perfectly hidden inside.
Once you finished this initial sewing, keep the garment inside out for now, sew together the front and back of right/left sleeve and then the other. Finally, sew both sleeves onto the main part of the scrub.
By the time you finish all the steps properly, you will have a complete scrub top. During the sewing, you can also try it to make sure it fits perfectly. This trialing amid of sewing also makes your work even more flawless.
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Altering the Scrubs Top and Pant
Altering is another effective way of making scrub fit better. Altering means minimizing the width or length of clothes by sewing. It takes just a few minutes. Here you will get to know how you can alter your scrub top and scrub pant.
a) Altering Scrub Top
Follow the steps to alter your scrub top from the side to make a baggy fitted.
- Lay down your buggy scrub on the surface.
- Keep your old best-fitted dress on the baggy top to get the measurement.
- Mark the area with pin or chalk.
- Now start sewing the scrub along the marked lines.
- Finally, cut out the extra fabrics from both sides.
b) Altering the Pant
If your pant needs to be altered, follow these steps.
Step-1: Determination
At first, determine where your scrub pant needs to be altered. In most cases, they need to be altered in the waist or legs.
Step-2: Pin the Excess Material
Stand in front of a mirror wearing your pant. If you find the waistline is too large, do not stretch, simply pinch both the right and left sides inside of the waistline. Make sure that you have pinched equal amount of excess material on both sides.
Now insert a sewing pin/needle/safety pin through each of the pinched sides in a vertical direction placing it close to your finger. Make sure that the pins you pinched have gone through the material perfectly on both sides.
Step-3: Pin Placing
If your pant legs are too long, cuff the extra material of your pants under, until you have got your desired leg length. Now, place pins at the top of the cuff following a horizontal manner, and make sure that those pins completely penetrate all of the layers of the material.
Step-4: Needle and Thread Preparation
Turn your pant inside out. Take a needle and 10-inch thread. Now run the threads through the needle, and knot down the back of double layers of the thread. Choose a thread color that is the exact or nearly exact match to your pant color.
Step-5: Sewing
Sew the pinched material around the waistline and cuffed material around the legs. You can effectively do this by pushing the needle through the material and up through the underside. Keep doing this, until you have sewn horizontally around the full cuffed pant leg, as well as vertically along the pinched material inside the pant waistline.
Step-6: Get It Ready
When you are done with sewing, try it to be confirmed that you have done your job correctly. If you find it perfect, iron the cuffed and pinched areas so that they lie flat.
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How to Make Scrub Smaller by Shrinking
If your scrub is a little large, shrinking it using washing machine and dryer is a quick way to bring the size down. In this case, 100% cotton made scrub shrinks faster than other partial cotton or polyester made scrubs.
Step-1: Placing the Scrub
Place your scrub in the washing machine. Make sure that you are going to wash your scrub with other clothes that will not emit any extra color during washing. Because, mixing light color with white or colorful clothing with white may cause the clothing dye to bleed, as a result, the original color of the cloth will be lost!
Step-2: Setting
Change the setting of your washing machine to Regular/Heavy in warm to hot water. Now switch on the machine. Washing scrub in this method usually takes about 30 minutes to an hour, so wait for it.
Step-3: Drying
When the washing will be finished, take the scrub from the machine and put it into a machine dryer. Set the dryer to a medium to very hot setting. Also, if you wish, you can use a fabric softener dryer sheet during drying.
Step-4: Take a trial
Finally, get the scrub out of the dryer and check the size. If it is still too loose, you can attempt for further shrinking. If it is too small, you can try to stretch it to fit with your body by regular wearing.
How to Fold Your Scrub Top?
Folding scrub top in right way is important to keep your scrub always in a good shape. If you know how to fold scrub, you can take your scrub top in your travel bag without harming its good shape and flat outlook. To learn how you can fold your nursing scrub top follow the steps.
Step-1: Washing
To fold your scrub for storing or traveling, first, you need to be sure that you have washed it. If you fold an unwashed or sweaty top, it will be full of odor when you unfold it to wear.
Step-2: The Folding
Lay your scrub on the floor keeping the face side down. Then fold the scrub half from any side. At this stage, both sleeves will be one on another. Now fold the sleeves on the opposite side of their faces. If you can do those steps properly, your scrub will be in a rectangular shape. Finally, fold the scrub top again from the front end.
This is the standard style of storing the scrub for future use. But if you want to minimize the size for packing while traveling, you can do another folding in the middle.
Summing Up
A perfect fit scrub is always expected.
Most of the time, a nurse has to be conscious about her ready-made bought scrub as order scrub almost always comes in good measurement.
However, even if you do not get the perfect fit or want your old buggy scrub to fit again, you can ensure the perfect fit for yourself following any of our three strategies.
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