pastille pt. 1: fitting & muslin

next up, the pastille dress from colette patterns book. i went into this pattern with knowledge about some tweaks i would have to make. i've read other people's reviews on it and seen some serious fitting issues going on in the back! so, thanks to the awesome interwebs, i went into my muslin taking all this into consideration.




first, the front: colette patterns are designed for women with an "average american bust." i, however, am not so "average american" in this respect. so, i knew i would have to do a serious sba to make it work for me. also, i had been studying how to draft a basic bodice block from a pattern making book and discovered that my dart intake is only 1 1/2" -2", whereas this pattern has more than a 4" dart intake. uh... yeah.

on the left is the bottom half of the bodice
front which, you can see, i altered significantly

i only had to look at the pastille pattern pieces to know it in no way would fit me as is. not even close. i won't go into details over the sba right now because some searching led me to a very good tutorial. it's easy and totally demystifies how to reduce a darted bodice, something i have struggled with in the past. i highly recommend checking it out here.


on to the back: so, i've seen that people using this pattern have had some seriously excessive amounts of fabric going on in the back. since i'm rather narrow on top anyway, i decided to cut the back a size 0, but reduce the dart intake at the waist to give me the size 4 width at the waist.

to do this, i marked the innermost leg of the dart on the size 4 line (on the seamline), but narrowed the dart and redrew it (this ensures that the dart is in the right place to line up with the skirt dart). did you follow that? instead of adjusting my side seam (transitioning from a 0 down to a 4 at the waist) i just went with the smaller size then added width by taking a smaller dart. i noticed that many of the fitting problems others had seemed to be caused by excess fabric vertically and this adjustment took care of that for me.

the green line is my re-drawn dart, the line
i'm pointing to is the original outer dart leg

i know that isn't the clearest explanation ever, if you want more details just ask and i'll be happy to clarify!


all in all, it worked out really well and my muslin fit almost perfectly. i still had a little extra in the bust i had to reduce, but that was pretty much it. success! oh, wanna see my fabric?

that's the understitching on the facing at the neckline,
this picture just happens to show the fabric most accurately

it's a red, cotton-rayon blend with a twill weave. loooove this fabric. it's so chic, classic and perfect for the winter/spring transition. and the best part, i got it for less than $3/yd. so basically, this dress (with lining) cost me less than $20.


—lisa g

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