Gettin' familiar with the forward shoulder

Recently I admitted to myself that I need to do a forward shoulder adjustment on most garments. Simple enough on a sleeveless garment where you can just redraw the shoulder stitching line, but what if there's a sleeve involved? I'm trying to figure that out on my current project:

BurdaStyle 8516, "Ellinor"

I decided to invest some time in improving the shoulder fit on this tunic since it's a really simple pattern that could be easily adapted to create other styles. So I consulted Fitting & Pattern Alteration: A Multi-Method Approach by Liechty, Pottberg and Rasband.

I picked this up after I heard Susan Khalje mention that it is her favorite fit book. I haven't used it much yet, but so far I like it's technical, no frills approach to analysis and correction of fit issues. Each fit issue is addressed on a 2-page spread, and the chapters are broken out by body area - hip, torso, neck - which makes it efficient to flip through looking for your particular issue. They give you line drawings of "the wrinkles" that we love to analyze, and a text description of the underlying structural reason for them. Then they describe how to resolve the issue on a fitting garment and on the flat pattern pieces. I get lost reading the text, but the pictures are understandable for the most part.


Here's my altered back bodice piece where I cut open the back in a few places so I could move the shoulder seam forward by half an inch. Extra fabric is added to the back to accommodate the fact that the armscye is moved forward.


Here's my altered front bodice. You can't really see the forward shoulder adjustment since I just chopped off a piece of the pattern at the shoulder seam and carved out a bit at the armhole. You can, though, see how I pinched some fabric out at the neckline, tapering to nothing at the hem. I did this because I found there was a bit of extra fabric at the neckline on my muslin (possibly related to my forward shoulders?).

Now, the sleeve pattern piece. The F&PA book shows how to alter a sleeve for a forward shoulder adjustment, but I just don't get it... Then I found this tip on Pattern Review which sounded simple enough, so I used that method (literally, slashing the piece horizontally underneath the sleeve notches, moving the cap forward the necessary amount, and redrawing/truing the seamlines) to start with.

I muslined that sleeve piece and found two issues, (1) I didn't like how much ease was in the sleeve cap (1.5") and (2) the angle of the sleeve felt very restrictive - it was fine with my arms by my side but tight when I raised them.

The first thing I did was to remove the ease off the sleeve cap, shown as the red line in the photo above. (BTW I highly recommend Kathleen Fasanella's post Sleeve Cap Ease is Bogus if you're looking for justification to do this.)


The sleeve cap was 5.5" at this point (versus it's original height of 6"). My recent epiphany on how sleeve angle relates to sleeve cap height (thanks to David Page Coffin's Shirtmaking book) is still fresh in my mind, so I decided to lower the sleeve cap height by 0.5", thereby giving my arm a bit more freedom to move. (And yes, if you followed the epiphany link, I still need to finish that shirt for Tim; I'm too selfish with my time to sew for others.) In the picture above, you can see my new pattern piece with shorter sleeve cap height laid on top of the previous sleeve pattern piece. Note that the sleeve is wider now.



When you remove sleeve cap height, you are really just redistributing the armhole seam by giving yourself more width in the arm (the length of the armhole stitching line is unchanged so no adjustment is necessary to the bodice!). This is exactly what I wanting for this tunic - a slightly looser, more flowy sleeve.

Now I've got my silk fabric cut out and I'm ready to sew this sucker up. I'm going to add a keyhole with a button closure at the back neck - totally unnecessary as it fits over my head as is, but it'll "add interest". Coming right up...

The Coffee Date Dress

The Coffee Date Dress is a recent and very popular pattern submission on BurdaStyle (first available in size 32 and now in sizes 34-42. It is a *free pattern* (I know we all love those words) submitted by elainemay. I love it! This project kind of took on a life of it's own. Initially I didn't plan to put much work into it, but once I decided that I wanted to use a delicate silk crepe for the bodice, I realized I'd need to add something for stability in the bodice, and it all kind of snowballed from there. I remembered Cidell's 11-2007-106 dress in which she used a similar combination of fabrics so I took a few cues from her post re: construction.



Fabric
Bodice: Silk crepe purchased June 2007 in Montreal, and silk organza lining from stash
Skirt: Rayon woven purchased November 2008 at Textile Studios during Pattern Review Day in Seattle (they have since ceased fabric sales).

Notes on construction/alterations
A muslin was a must since I had no idea what to expect of the fit. I started with size 38 and made a few tweaks.


1. Moved shoulder seam forward 1"
2. Lowered bust dart 3/4"
3. Removed 2" total at back darts and side seams for closer fit at waist
4. Curved CB seam at neck to better shape to my back/neck
5. Removed extra fabric at bodice front neckline (vertical slash from neck to (but not through) waist, overlap at neckline to remove 1/2" each side or 1" total)
6. Shortened skirt hem


To keep the neckline and armholes from stretching out, I applied fusible interfacing, clipping when necessary to curve the corners.


Similarly, I basted twill tape to the skirt waistline for stability.



Because the silk is so delicate, I underlined with silk organza. Actually, it was a mix of lining/underlining techniques: I sewed the fashion fabric and the organza bodices separately, put them right sides together and stitched together only at CB (so those edges would be finished when I inserted the zipper), then turned them wrong sides together and basted the neckline, armholes, and waist together and treated the unit as one.


I finished the neckline and armholes with folded bias strips of fabric that were turned to the inside and handstitched to the organza.


Here's the lapped zipper that I tried for the first time last weekend. I'm happy with how it turned out.


Katherine did bring up the issue of having a facing or lining with a lapped zipper. The tutorial that I followed (Rosebud's article in Threads #134, Dec 07/Jan 08) does not address this, she just says that the raw edges should be finished before inserting the zipper. Therefore, my lapped zipper is exposed on the inside. Had I considered this earlier, I think I would have left the fashion fabric and lining separate until after I inserted the zipper, then stitched the organza to cover the zipper tape.


When I initially basted the ruffle to the front bodice, I found that it really got lost in the spotted print. So I dug out some black silk charmeuse scraps, made some bias binding and stitched it to the bottom edge of the ruffle.


I used bias strips to cover the raw edges of the waist seam.

Conclusion
Phew! This was a time consuming project (for me) but I truly enjoyed the process and it really made me draw on my knowledge of things I had seen in books or other blogs. Now Elaine does provide excellent written instructions, but because I decided to omit the facings included in the pattern, I had to do things a little differently. I would seriously consider making this one again, maybe in a nice summery cotton? This pattern is a winner.

Back to basics

Given my love for Burda magazine, I'm surprised it took me this long to try a Burdastyle pattern. I had a hankering to use one of the knits I recently acquired, so I decided to try out the Lydia tee. It's a free download that you print at home. Can't beat that!

Burdastyle Lydia 3197

Fabric
B&W stripe cotton jersey from Michael Levine in LA.

Notes on construction/alterations
There are neckline facing pattern pieces for this top but I didn't bother to trace them. Why would you want a facing on your t-shirt?? Instead I used a narrow strip of fashion fabric to finish the neckline, as described in the Aug/Sept 2006 issue of Threads (#126), "Expert Techniques for Finishing Stretch Knits."

Conclusion
Easy, comfy, pretty much what I was expecting. I'll use this again, but if I want a more fitted t-shirt (the armscye in particular), I'll use BWOF 2-2005-114 which is what I used to make my mod neckband tee.



I'm looking forward to trying more from Burdastyle, including:

- the Elisabeth Coat designed by the very talented Geri

- the very popular JJ blouse

- the supercute Sabrina dress