A Tale of Two Muslins

I had a virtual friend mention that she was always impressed with my alterations. It kind of surprised me, but on contemplation, I realized that perhaps most people either don't have the extensive changes needed, or just do as I did when I started sewing, and donate items that either don't fit right or don't look good.

I have to say that I started sewing when I was pregnant with my first daughter in 1965. Yes, I'm that old, however I was a young mother. At that time, I could take one of the big four patterns and use a size 10, without alterations and generally make it work. As my age and body changed, I became more and more dissatisfied with the fit of standard patterns. In my 30's, I discovered Burda patterns, and they fit much better for many years.

In 1996, after my prior husband passed on I decided to "go back to school" and not sure how that would work, I started taking sewing classes at the local Junior College, aka Community College. They had an excellent fashion department, and over the years I learned a lot from various instructors. One of my favorite classes was in fitting. The class was taught by a wonderful lady named Ginny Winter, and she had done alterations commercially for many years, and seen all kinds of different bodies of all sizes and shapes. One of the first things we did was put up big sheets of paper against a wall, and a friend traced our body shape onto the paper. Then we contrasted our body shapes against the ANSCII standards. It was a very eye opening experience for me.

In the last few decades, I've had various classes that do the same type of contrasting using various other scales including the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio in fashion design. It's rather eye opening if you've never explored it. Here's an article from a textile journal:   https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/254/17/172013/pdf

Here's another with the golden ration used to determine the ratios of the proper lengths for your body:  https://www.smartwomenonthego.com/dressing-your-best-the-rule-of-thirds/

The bottom line for me is that knowing your body and what works and doesn't work for you saves an enormous amount of time in deciding on what to wear and what to make. My most astonishing realization was that unlike my belief, my arms were not short. I just have very narrow, sloping shoulders! Now when I start to make a pattern, that's my first adjustment so I know that it's going to be in the range of possibility for me.

Back to the muslins. I think this will very well illustrate the difference the alterations I have to make to my patterns better than lots and lots of verbiage. I decided for my shirt pattern to go with the Jalie 3130 as my first project. (I am going to make several different shirt patterns before I'm done.)

As I have done Jalie patterns before, I know that the shoulders are much wider than mine. (I'm also short, now 5'2" down from 5'4", so length issues are usually included. For the first shirt, I narrowed the shoulders, the upper back, and adjusted the collar and collar stand to fit the revised neck edge. Other than that, the pattern was made as drafted. I thought a long shirt would be okay for this fabric.

Front, needing pressing but not too bad. Sleeves obviously too long. 

Back...oh, my! Sway back adjustment, or?

After studying the images, and putting my sloper up against the original pattern, I eliminated 2" in length, redrafted completely new sleeves, and elongated the back darts up towards the shoulders by several inches. 

The second muslin, in a "quilting cotton" purchased from an online quilting shop for the color:

Much better, but the side darts need to be backed off a bit, and I should actually shorten the sleeves a bit. I'm so used to sleeves being too long, I don't always notice until I see a photo. This is wearable IMO, once it gets a good pressing.

Back is much better, but those darts need to be moved towards the center by an inch, and raised  from the original by 3 1/2". After looking at these pictures, I'll be shortening the sleeves a bit too. This particular shirt fits better than any RTW shirt I've found, and even though it's not perfect yet, it will be filling a spot in my closet. It's also my very favorite color, so that helps too! 

I've gone ahead and made the following changes to my pattern:

Narrowed shoulders

Shortened front and back by 2"

Backed off side bust dart by 1"

Narrowed back neck, collar, and collar stand

Moved back darts 1" towards the center

Raised back dart by 3 1/2"

Drafted new sleeve, and shortened it by an inch (initially) TBD if that's enough. 

Next, I'm moving forward with a "soft navy Pima cotton shirting" purchased from Fashion Fabrics Club in September. It's a lovely fabric and I hope it will turn out fabulous!

As to the prior muslin and the jacket. Both are going to be reworked. I realized I didn't interface the hems in the jacket and they really need it. The lilac sandwashed rayon shirt is going to be taken apart, with the back recut, the sleeves shortened, and the front shortened. That should at least make it wearable if not perfect. 😁