I got the dress muslin more or less figured and tried it on – due to using the blazer pattern instead of the dress pattern, I actually ended up with a mock-up that was too big, among other issues:
- Too much gaping in the front armscye
- Too little room in the back armscye
- Needing a tiny bit of waist curve at both side seams and the center back
Amazingly, I’m not going to need a full belly adjustment or a full butt adjustment.
The waist curves were easily fixed by sewing a quick dart along the seam lines. Amusingly enough, I ended up creating a dart absolutely identical to the curve I had drafted out because the pattern said my waist was too big. So there’s that.
The armscye…that was going to be an issue. Normally, that’s where the bust dart goes. This dress, however, would look terrible with a bust dart. I had originally used the pattern for the jacket on the assumption that the amrscyes for the sleeveless dress would be too small, but those were also assuming an open jacket. In the end, I admit I took the different between the two, roughed it out with my curved ruler, and hoped.
This time, I didn’t even draft sleeves so I could adjust the armscye on the fly. And I wasn’t even going to attempt to fix the neckline until I had everything else right.
Round 2 fixed the remaining issues with fullness in the waist, including a couple of seam curves over my lower back. I also corrected for my slightly hunched back by curving in the top of the center back seam. Added to the rest of the work, I managed to draft out the need for a zipper entirely, which should make everything much easier.
I did eventually turn to the sleeves. I had sized up the sleeve cap along with everything else. And just like everything else, I was apparently a little too zealous about it.
(As you can see, the neckline was still pretty awful at this stage.)
Sleeve #2 just shaved the sleeve cap a bit (a lot) and worked better. I just hand-basted this in, but the sleeve cap was much more reasonable, even poorly sewn.
In drafting my third (and final?) sleeve, I discovered that I’d managed to exactly draft the original sleeve cap without size changes. I spent a good 15 minutes waving my hands around and ranting at Shoryl that I had somehow managed to exactly replicate a sleeve the pattern told me wouldn’t fit me.
All that done, it was finally time to create a fair copy and start cutting the fashion fabric. Shoryl made the incredibly good point that I might want my actual pattern to be in a fabric that wouldn’t get confused with the now-mountainous pile of discarded muslin.
Through this process, I drew heavily on both the methods of pattern grading by Melly Sews, and the instructions to create a custom sleeve by Threads Magazine.
A Twist of Metaphor 