Blue Dress - Fit to Wear!

Feeling quite smug with myself for figuring out my figure issues and sewing a muslin fit to perfection, I was ready to embark on a thousand new projects - one adorable dress at a time.  It also makes me angry that though there are lots of books/instructions on making adjustments, virtually no one who sews tells the rest of us the dirty secret.... almost every body will require at least one or two adjustments to our patterns.  Just accept it upfront as part of the sewing process! If I had understood this truth up front, I could have spent alot more time enjoying AND wearing my projects.

Anyway, having already fallen in love with Simplicity 2444, a Project Runway design I had seen made up at my JoAnn's store. It was also a very close match with one of my favorite ready to wear dresses and made it the perfect pattern to try out my newly acquired fitting skills on.

Pulling out my original muslin, I wrote all of the adjustments now knew I would need to make for every single garment I wanted to sew, and hung up my list on my refrigerator. Though I have a sewing room – working in my kitchen/dining room is my preference!

Locating all the pattern pieces for the view I had in mind, I got started making my adjustments. However, I quickly realized that on the muslin the adjustments had been much simpler because of the straight lines in the McCalls sheath-style pattern I had used. The bodice adjustments I needed to make on my Simplicity pattern pieces fell across several curvier curves. This meant that "folding" out the excess pattern tissue caused the cutting lines to become misshapen due to the increased curvature of the pattern pieces. So what is a not sew girly girl to do? FIGURE it out!

Un-taping my earlier adjustments of 1/2 across the chest, I made two sets of 1/8 inch adjustments to equal 1/2 an inch. I kept them close together but far enough apart so that when folded up, the cutting lines remained relatively unchanged. I knew that I could take the full 1/2 adjustment and re-draw the cutting line, but did not want to take a chance on getting it wrong. Especially since taking several smaller adjustments kept the original lines intact.

I repeated the process for all my bodice pattern pieces, cut them from muslin and made my test run of the bodice only since that was the hardest part to make fit. PERFECTION! Happy with the muslin bodice, I cut all the pieces out of my fashion fabric, a piece of linen I have had for years and sewed it up.

I can't even express how gratifying it was to make this dress and actually wear it! The fit is "custom" and better than some of my ready to wear clothes. JOY, JOY, JOY! And....what to sew next?!