Thursday, July 7, 2016

Thoughts on Pattern Alterations....

Do you ever get discouraged trying to figure out how to get a pattern to fit reasonably well?  I do.  This the spring I was determined to get the basic blouse pattern #600 from Silhouette Patterns to fit.  I didn't really accomplish my goal but I do have several muslins that I can still play with.  You can see my feeble attempts here: Muslin 1,  Muslin 2, and Muslin 3.  I was very discouraged after these attempts.  So, I decided to walk away for a while.

Next, I decided to just sit down and read all of the directions because sometimes you can miss something important when you skim the directions,  You know what I found, right?  I missed a little paragraph stating that if you're under a certain height to take xx amount out of the front, back, and sleeve.  So, after giving it a lot of thought, I went back to muslin #2 and carefully pinned out the noted amount all the way around.  Much to my surprise, some of the "needed" alterations disappeared.  The funkiness with the tightness across the back disappeared.   The shoulder slope and arm hole do not need altering.  Can you hear me jumping up and down for joy?  I pretty sure the muslin that I was playing with was the size 6w and I am thinking about making the same change to the 5w and seeing how it fits.

Don't get me wrong, there are still plenty of changes that need to occur to the pattern.  Just not all the ones that I initially listed.  I need to make changes to the pattern before I make another muslin but as of this moment I am a little bit encouraged to move forward with the blouse pattern again.

Have you made the alteration shortening the area between the shoulder and the chest?  How did it work for you?  Hopefully, I will have another muslin soon but it may take a while as I have three projects running - a quilt, knitting, and the #600 blouse pattern.  It's hard to juggle it all sometimes.  The quilt has the highest priority of the three.

Happy Stitching!


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