Long weekend ahead

It is Saturday morning and I am back from CURVES! A shower awaits, some shopping to do and a jacket will get finished today!

Next is my dress and I have it visualized how it is going to look. I have two choices in mind with one being PMB pattern and the other being New Look. Stay tuned.

Not much sewing going on

Another fantastic work week that is occupying my life full time plus! I have not been able to touch my jacket and truly there is not much more to complete. I wanted to work on it some during the evenings this week but either I have brought work home or worked late and then have no energy to go into my sewing room to actually sew.

The best I am doing sewing wise is thinking about it. I have planned my dress to go with this jacket. It will not be the Vogue designer dress as I don't think the neckline of the dress works with this jacket. I am planning a sheath style dress, shoulder or princess seams, and will use piping along the seams. The piping will be made from the jacket fabric.

After the dress, I am going to sew up some knit tops for immediate gratification! Plus I am participating in the Coat Sew Along and have to finalize my decision for the pattern and fabric this weekend.

Later!

Sewing during the weekend

Saturday and Sunday I was able to get some sewing in. Again I have taken a simple pattern and added some degree of difficulty-adding a lining, using the Hong Kong seam finish, and a really difficult/ravelly fabric as well. I do love a challenge.

All seams are finally completed. I love the Hannah Silk Ribbon I used for the seam bindings. The ribbons are on the bias and the colors are like ombre in that they go from a shade of green, fading into a lighter or darker shade. Some of the ribbons have some rose and purple shades blended in as well.

I like the fit of this jacket. The back pleat is a nice feature and design for this jacket. Here is a photo of the jacket on Alma Marie.

And here is the back pleat:

You can go here to see a few more photos of the jacket in progress

A few more comments regarding fit

Another Linda wrote the following regarding shoulder slope and fit.

"Hi Linda,
I hope you don't mind if I give you another possible reason for this. But it could be your shoulder slope is off, and this makes a huge difference on how the back neck lays. If the fabric is trying to lay against the shoulder instead of standing straight up at the neck, it will bunch behind neck. This will happen on fabric that does not have a stiff hand. If it hits the shoulder before it hits the neck it will gap in the back. Without going into a novel here on the comments, let me just say that I found this out too. I should post on my blog some photos of what I did to find this. Of course it would not be on my body because the photos are too revealing to publish, but I found out that a 1" shoulder slope works for me. Find that magic number for your shoulder slope and a lot of other "problems" will disappear"

Beth, also added a few more comments on shoulder slope and fit.

"That's a good point about the shoulder slope in the previous comment. Having a duct dape double that duplicates my posture makes it easy to see where I'm rounded. I've begun making the alteration automatically, before I tissue fit. I can always cut the extra fabric off, but I can't add it if I (later) realize I need it.That frees me up to overlook other alterations--LOL--like the front neckline falling below my bra! Cynthia Guffey does a fit workshop about rounded back and shoulder slope that was very eye-opening for me. I would never have accepted that so many of my fit problems are caused by rounded back before I attended her session at Expo a few years ago."

Thanks for providing more feedback. I would love to attend one of Cynthia's classes.

Angie wrote the following:

"Linda, what DOES make the back neck stand away like that? I've had that
problem in most sheath type patterns. I've had to take as much as 4 inches
from the back center seam at the neck before. Does my head/neck shift way
forward like a goose? Do I have a hump I'm not aware of? Am I narrow and dainty in the ONE place on my body I have no feasible way of viewing? Inquiring minds want to know!! "

In "Fit For Real People", when the garment neckline stands out or gaps open in the upper back neckline, the book refers to this as a high round back and has a fitting technique for this. Years ago I use to make this adjustment all the time and not sure why I decided I did not need it. At that time I did not make forward shoulder adjustments but now I do. So part of my theory on this, and by no means is it necessarily the correct one, I think that I may need to do both now. AND, I probably should take a shoulder dart as well.

I have Pattern Master Boutique (PMB) software. One enters their personal measurements into this program and the program drafts your personal sloper. Sometimes the initial sloper could use some tweaking; after you sew up a fitting musline and tweak that, you then adjust your measurements in the software program's measurement chart to perfect your sloper. All of this being said, my sloper automatically inserts a shoulder dart in PMB. When you draft a style or pattern you can choose to insert a shoulder dart in your design or not but when you overlay the sloper onto your pattern you can visualize how the design will look with or without that dart.

The frustrating thing about pin fitting a pattern is that sometimes I see this back gap and sometimes I don't or perhaps I fail to look for it. I know if one does a muslin then you will catch these things. I choose not to make a muslin simply because if I did a muslin for everything I sewed I would not make very many things. Perhaps I if I used a pattern more than once after getting a sure fit then some of those issues would not exist.

With all of that said, sometimes in the end it is simply the back pattern piece is drafted fuller. I think that is the case for this pattern.

One more note on this issue for this dress pattern. The zipper was to be inserted in the side seam. I like some others who have made this pattern for a top only, also inserted the zipper in the back. Perhaps I needed to adjust the back seam for that design change. Yet my mind says it would stick out no matter how you did it.

If anyone else has some thoughts or other fitting ideas about this, please add your comments. Fitting is always something we sewist strive to perfect. Your feedback is always appreciated. Also sometimes it is not us it is the pattern. Yet if it shows up in almost all patterns, then it probably is more of a personal fitting issue than the pattern.

Dawn wrote the following:

I was watching your progress with interest, as I too was intrigued by the
dress , and the tops others had made out of this pattern - so I bought the
pattern and made the dress for a party, doing my usual sizing adjustments - 14
to the bust and a 16 from there down. The whole upper part was tight - I had to
scoop out the armholes and even then it was too tight and didn't really fit
well, therefore, from there on down.It seems like you had the same problem.Would it behave better in a size up? Maybe. But it isn't such a great pattern that I
would be going for that. I look better in a V neck, I think, and while the
pleats are cool - they aren't Wow.So I am moving on. The jacket however, I am
going to try.....Thanks for letting us know how it went

I appreciated the comment. I used size 14 for shoulders and upper chest tapering to 16 at bust to dress bottom. I also made a FBA as well. Maybe a drapy fabric would work better. I am not sure I look better in a V neck, scoop necks normally work best for me. But the pleats did not work well for me on this neckline. Like Dawn, I might could have scooped out the armholes and I think the pleats pulling affected that area also. Anyway, thank you Dawn for your comments. I will give the dress to Goodwill and know someone will be able to use it.

Second thoughts!

I have had some second thoughts about my recent dress I just completed. As I noted in that post, I had some issues about the fabric. I decided to try on the dress again and I just do not like the look of it on me. I think that the bust area may still be too snug and I wore a different bra with it today and it still fit rather snug. The snugness makes the pleats pull strangely. When I look at it from a side view, those pleats are pulling above the bust area giving it a strange fullness above the bust and then the bust area looks like it is pulling. There is not really any more seam allowance to let out in the princess seam or side area.

I feel like one of those examples of "what not to wear". Darn it, I really like those pleats at the neckline but they are not working well for me. I thought about cutting it off to make a top but that is not going to change the fit of the bust area. The upper back also stands away from neck area, that may indicate I need to do an upper back adjustment??!!!

Here is an interesting thing about trying on the dress and sitting in it, the concern I had about the wrinkles did not seem to be such an issue. Granted I did not have it on for a really long period of time, like wearing all day at work. It did wrinkle some but not like I thought. Go figure!

Well, I know that Goodwill can use some donations so I think I will be adding this to the bag I have already. The good of all of this is that I honed my sewing skills, drafted a lining to be attached to facings and perfected my lining of a sleeveless dress like RTW.

I still have the other fabric piece to make the Vogue dress or another style dress. I am debating now whether this jacket will look right with the Vogue dress pattern. I have second thoughts about the feasibility of the two working well together.

Later!

Hong Kong and Hannah Silk Ribbons

Slow progress on the jacket with Mother's day last weekend and activities around that. I was able to do a little sewing Sunday evening and a little yesterday evening prior to DH arriving home and fixing dinner.

I decided to do a Hong Kong finish for the jacket seams. I underlined all fabric pieces and played around with serger for a seam finish. But after acquiring the bias ribbon mentioned in my previous post, the green shades in most of the ribbons match the green specs in the jacket material. I decided that these will do great for the Hong Kong seam finish. Here are shots of the jacket with seams being enclosed with the ribbons. Still a work in progress and several more seams to go.



The bottom photo is a true color of the jacket fabric and lining. The close up was really washed out and I could not seem to capture the colors even when editing in Photoshop.
I hope to get another 10 minutes or so this evening to continue the work on the jacket.