Wednesday, January 09, 2008

January: A Month of Muslins


First of all, a huge shout out to Marji for all of her time and help. It is so nice to have another set of eyes - especially experienced ones. Also, Debbie, thank you too and all of the others who are offering help and support.

My question is this - why am I spending so much time on this when I should be working on my SWAP?? Answer - because I'm driven, that's why :-)

Tissue #3

Anyway, this is my current pattern for front bodice. This is what I did
1. re cut a straight size 12
2. raised it one inch above the bust line
3. re-drew the armhole to lower it back down
4. did an FBA according to the method in FFRP (see link Marji left on my last post)
This involved pinning the dart, pinning the tissue to my Tshirt at shoulder and side seam, measuring the difference between pattern CF and my CF ,which was 1.5", slashing and spreading the pattern that amount, and then staring at it for 45 minutes trying to figure out what to do about the weird armhole)
5. At this point I figured, "Hey, it's just tissue, try it on" So again I pinned it to myself and guess what? It fit. Really. The waist was where it belonged. The dart was only slightly too high. everything else seemed to fit OK. I was most surprised by the armhole because it seemed to curve around and fit close to the body. I ALWAYS have trouble with gaposis at the armhole, so I wonder if this will fix that.

I marked the apex on the pattern and then drew a box around the dart and slid it down about 1/2".

I still may make one more tissue taking out the length below the dart to see if that gives me a better armhole. Marji gave me some good suggestions for doing that, and I may try both to see which gives the better fit.

5 comments:

Chicago Sarah said...

Cool! Thanks for sharing your progress, I'm learning a lot...

Carolyn (Diary of a Sewing Fanatic) said...

Nancy - I'm so glad that Debbie and Marji were able to help you. Hopefully you are getting closer to a good fit now! :)

Rose said...

Thank you for sharing all your alterations, as well as the steps involved. It's really great for me to see how long it takes (checking everything) and all the details involved in making a pattern fit.

Cheers,

Rose

Marji said...

Happy to help.
I had to read this through a few times, but I believe that on the next one you're going to unpin the fold above the bustline and then fold it back in under - as drawn - right?
It'll be interesting to see where you get the better armscye.

I'm really happy to read your reaction: "It works"

Vicki said...

Great. Keep it up, cos when you get to "perfection" you will be an expert in fit!