Line Backer Shoulders

Apparently I have these.  

A week Saturday, I went to a class on making an Edwardian waist using a book based on a ruler system (it sounds more difficult than it was).  When it came time to fitting the muslin, out of a class of about 20 students, only 2 experienced extreme fitting problems.  My luck….I was one of the fitting problems.

However, I did learn a lot.  First, I was told that I have broad shoulders….that is only in comparison to my allegedly small waist.  Who knew, because I do not consider my waist on the small side.  I would say it is average.  The focus was on the large differential between waist and shoulders which cause all of my fitting problems.

Remember, that civil war bodice that I have temporarily given up on?  Yup, the fitting issues there are exactly the same.  When the teacher went through and explained how to make the muslin fit, it was downright enlightening.  Really, a light bulb went off and explained so much.  The need to take out inches from side seams was due, as explained to me, to the waist/shoulder differential.

Dress prior to making changes

I learned that a center back seam will assist in fitting this issue without having to make crazy alterations to side seams.  You can bet that civil war bodice is now going to have a back seam.   As you can well imagine, big darts are also my friend!

With the Brown Leaf Dress as I am calling Advance 7065, as I was making it up I found that it was really not fitting through the bust and waist.  Here I was worried about an FBA and it is too big in that area.  Part of this is caused by the dreaded waist/shoulder differential.  So I made some changes to the seams around the waist and low bust area also increasing the darts in these area.

Take a look at this:

Original dart highlighted in blue.
New dart highlighted in purple.  Wow!
That is some difference!!!!

Original seam line highlighted in blue.  The new seam
line in purple.  Take a look at that difference! 

Seriously the darts are an inch width on one side for a total of two inches removed in the waist area from 2 darts on each side.  That’s a whopping 4 inches on each side.  Did I make any changes to the shoulders?? Nope….they fit quite nicely. 

Sewing can be crazy making but you can never say it is dull!