Colette Patterns and my body type do not get along very well.
The patterns are made for a shorter, curvier, smaller proportioned person than the tall, slim, broad shouldered and backed, insanely long torsoed person that I am. If I didn't love their patterns and styles so much I don't know if I'd put up with what I have to to get their patterns to fit.
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| The first muslin front. It was super gaping in the top half, and then pulled really tight the rest of the way down due to the darts being way too high for me. |
The crazy thing is that I do have a some what hourglass figure but it's all in my back and shoulders, not my bust like Colette patterns is made for. One of the re-posts I'm doing is on the Crepe dress, which I made about a year and a half ago. Thankfully, a lot of first time muslin kinks had been worked out with that dress...along with much hair pulling, cursing, and fabric chucking. It was not a very spiritual experience. I'm determined not to have this dress be a repeat of that; especially with my upcoming jacket attempt.
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| The first muslin of the back. It pulled so bad across the whole back, as you can see. |
With all that being said, here are the steps I've taken thus far:
-I did a brief tissue fitting to get a guage on how long I'd have to extend the torso. I don't like messing up my original pattern tissues so I just cut them out, estimated the seam allowances when I pinned the pieces together, put it on and assessed the damage.
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| My newly traced pattern block after I lengthened the torso and redrew the darts. |
-After the tissue fitting I figured I'd need about a 2 1/2" to 3" extension of the torso. I wasn't kidding when I said I had a long torso. I then traced out the pattern onto some swedish tracing paper, did a quick transfer of all the pattern markings, lengthened the torso, and redrew my darts.
-I then cut out my muslin from an old sheet from Goodwill I got specifically for muslining purposes, did a quick transfer of the pattern markings, and sewed that sucker up sans sleeves and zipper.
-I knew the armholes/sleeve area would be its own set of issues from my past experiences with Colette patterns. I decided the bodice would be the primary focus of today, and once those issues were worked out I could then redraft the sleeves. This will be my first time setting in sleeves too...hah!
-I threw on my muslin, had my wonderful Helper pin it down the back, and he even took pictures of the front and back for me so that I could analyze it in picture format to determine what needed changed. This saves a lot of awkward neck craning trying to see what's going on.
-As I've been staring at these pictures of myself I've been going through the book "Fit for Real People" to figure out what is going on with this thing as it's officially all over the place. Because there's so many things wrong with the fit I've just started at the beginning of the chapter on alterations and I'm working my way through each section. I'm pretty sure I'll be hitting broad back, broad shoulders, square shoulders, move the darts, small bust adjustment...you get the general idea.
-While I go through each section I'm making changes to my traced pattern in orange and immediately changing it on my muslin. After a few changes, I'm going to give trying it on another go so that I can see if I'm on the right track.
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| My pattern block post changes. Pretty involved and time consuming. |
I spent some time fitting the back by slashing down the back and widening it to fit for a broader back. This turned out to be superfluous because when I fixed the bust widening the back wasn't needed anymore other than widening the upper, back darts about a half inch.
Step 2 - Fitting the Bust
First thing I did was move the darts. They needed to be lowered and moved over. This fixed the biggest problem in the bust, which was the tight pulling across the chest. After that I did a tuck around the chest area to remove the excess, and made sure the neckline of the pattern matched the original. That fixed the gaping, which was the second biggest problem.
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| The second fitting. I've pinned how much of the top darts I want pulled in. The remaining pulling is due to needing to refit the armholes. The last step. |
Step 3 - Try It On Again
The second muslin included the initial back slashing along with the fixed bust. When I tried it on I realized I didn't need the back slashing because what was causing the tight fit in the back was the pulling across the bust. Once that pulling got fixed I didn't need the back slash anymore. I then switched out the backs and used the back from the first muslin. It fit perfectly except for the slight gaping by the nape of the neck. A simple thing of increasing the width of the upper darts fixed that issue.
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| The refitted bust! It draped beautifully after the changes. I'm so happy with how it turned out. |
I need to finish the sleeves and the armholes. They're extremely tight on me, which is a common issue I have with Colette patterns. I want to take some time to properly redraft the sleeve pattern because I've never set in sleeves before. When I changed the armholes of the Crepe I didn't need to worry about sleeves so I could just redraft with free reign.
After redrafting the sleeves it's time to draft my pattern for the circle skirt. Hooray! I'm either doing a circle skirt or a dirndl skirt so if there's not enough fabric for a circle skirt the dirndl skirt will be an easy replacement as it's only a rectangle. If I end up doing the dirndl skirt I might even do pleats! I'm really hoping the circle skirt works out, though, just because I'm a huge fan of twirly skirts.
Once everything's drafted I'll begin sewing! Very exciting. I am very pleased to say that this round of muslin making went a whole lot better than they've gone in the past. While it took a little time to puzzle out what needed to be done, once I figured things out in the book it was just a matter of trusting what it said and going for it.
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