Now that I had copied off my pattern, I decided that the adjustments I was going to make to the back waist length were so dramatic that it was time to drag out my sloper. A sloper is a custom fit basic pattern and it is a very useful tool in fitting.
For the project, the sloper is just a very loose guideline because I will be wearing a corset which is distort my shape, but it should keep my back length about the same. I laid the center back piece over the sloper to get an idea of how much difference there really was.
oh boy! This is going to be a big adjustment.
Before I tried to shorten anything, I decided to get a look at how the three back pieces fit together.
OK, this looks plausible.
The waist is cutting in a little bit, but it looks like the back dart in the sloper and the corset should keep this from being a problem.
I folded out the excess back length and front length and laid everything out on the sloper to see if this still felt like a reasonable set of changes.
Everything looked like is was semi-normal. I left the front lengths a little longer due to the difference in my corseted shape and the fact that the sloper is darted but the pattern is princess seamed. It was finally time to bite the bullet and cut out muslin #1!
The good news
The good news is that is looks like the back length is dead on. The slope of the dress form's shoulders disorts things a little bit, but the back of the cover is where the nape of my neck is, so I make sure that the back neck is in line with this target.
We're looking OK from the side too...
But, it's the front that's the problem.
I am supposed to have a 1" overlap in the front for the buttons, but this is not going to even come close. I don't really understand why because this whose system is designed to fit the bust better on the first try. I took a closer look at what was happening in the front and found a few possible explanations.
First, I think I need to go up one pattern size on the front. That's easy to do, but it doesn't address all the issues. The main issue is that I think I shortened the front in the wrong place. Take a look at this:
Awkward camera angle aside, the natural waist mark on the pattern is now above my natural waist. This never happens to me.
Also, the bust point now seems too low:
I think I need to adjust the pattern so that the bust point moves back up to the green pin head.
Back to the drafting board
The back three pieces seems fine, so I concentrated my efforts on the side front and center front pieces. Using my sloper, I adjusted the side front pattern so that I was taking out more from the side waist than the front wait. I also made sure to take the excess out above the bust point so that I could maintain the original bust point to waist ratio.
Above is the side front pattern resting on top of my sloper. You can see that the bust notch is in line with my bust point.
Here the the same pattern piece laid out and taped.
Then I needed to adjust the center front piece so that it matched up with the side front. For some reason, I didn't photograph that step.
After cutting out and attaching the new side front and center front pieces to the muslin, I had better results.
As per the instructions, I pinned out the waist excess into the fron darts.
There was some gapping that the front so I pinned out that excess.
The pattern is suppose to maintain a 1" overlap in the front for the buttons. Clearly, I don't have that. I have two tasks ahead of me for muslin 1.2.
1. figure out how to rotate that new bust dart into the princess seam.
2. blend in some extra fabric on the center front to create a 1" overlap for buttons.
These two changes only effect the center front piece. I also have to adjust the dart on the side waist.
Once these changes are taken care of, I'll be ready to try it on to adjust the armscye and the shoulder slope.
No comments:
Post a Comment