macaron pt. 2: fitting woes

i've made some good progress working on my muslin and lest you think i have completely lost my mind, this stripy fabric is just some awful fabric i had in my stash. so awful it's barely even muslin worthy. in fact, the rest of it is going straight to the trash. guilt free.

lest you think for some reason that this looks
cool, the stripes will absolutely make you go blind.
that is my public service announcement for the day.

after my first go around i made a few more adjustments and sewed up a second muslin. which was still not quite right. hmm. i made a few more pattern adjustments and thought i was ready to cut my real fabric, but decided to sleep on it first.


after all, what's the rush?


this morning with a clear head i tried my original muslin back on and realized it's not nearly as bad as i had thought, and that i totally made adjustments in all the wrong places for my second muslin. in fact, it's pretty darn close to where i need to be! i don't know what i was thinking before, maybe the weird stripes and truly awful fabric i used for the muslin skewed my vision. that and i nearly went blind sewing it. for some reason i pinched out fabric in the wrong places and it totally threw off and flattened the whole bust area in a weird way. i am so glad i went back to my original before throwing it out, in this case a second look was a very good idea!!


so it's back to square one, but since now i really know how to fix it, it'll be a piece of cake and i'll be sewing up this pattern in no time! don't get me wrong here, i have found this to be a beautifully sized pattern! the sizing chart and how it actually resembles the finished garment sizes is super reliable (unlike some other patterns i've worked with). 


but, what i'm really coming to realize is how badly i need a permanent sloper (or toile or block... whatever your preferred terminology is). all it is is a base pattern that fits perfectly. then i could simply take my own existing sloper to use as comparison for any pattern and save me from needing to muslin at all! to have a well-fitting sloper at my fingertips would save time, energy, worry and fabric. in fact, i think i need to make one right after i finish the macaron. at this point, i've invested so much into my fittings (and since i'm really close to getting it right) it'd be a shame to not finish my dress first. plus, there's still room for minor tweaks once i start in on the real thing.


so that's that. hopefully i'll be back soon with something real to show you all!


—lisa g