I went over to my oldest daughter's house today to tissue fit her Maggy London dress. She will be wearing the final dress in her brother-in-law's wedding at the end of August. My daughter is tiny, so I cut the pattern in a size 8 (I ever so briefly considered tracing the pattern but opted not to as I was pressed for time).As it turns out, I could easily use the size 6 for the midriff pieces. After that, it gets tricky. The front bodice pieces appear to be the correct size around the bottom; they meet nicely at center front and reach around just exactly to where the side seams should fall. But I think I need to do an FBA maybe? I don't know...it's not as though she's actually chesty! But the halter sections gap dreadfully and come nowhere near providing enough coverage to appear in public!
And then there's the back. The pieces are really close to the correct measurement at the bottom, but moving up her back about two inches, there's a good inch and a half gap between her center back and the center back of the dress!
And what to say about the shoulder seams? Another gap of about and inch and a half before I even take seam allowances into account.
I'm not sure I even know where to begin. How will I perform an FBA on a halter style bodice (it's not in FFRP, I checked!). How to I add enough width to the back of the dress to fit and still maintain the correct line on the Vee? I guess I will figure it out, but I'm stressing a little bit about it right now. We bought some fabric for a practice dress, but I'm thinking some cheap muslin is in order!
7 comments:
Yikes, it shoulds like several things need to be done. I know nothing about an FBA b/c, well, there is no need for me to know. How is it lengthwise, does her bust fit where it is supposed to? For the back, is she really athletic? I run/bike and have a muscular butt. This pulls fabric out over my lower back in a weird way. I have to do a swayback adjustment to fix it. I think a lot of the big 4 patterns are made for a much larger woman and then they scale it down for the smaller sizes. On the size 6/8 I think the proportions are off. I have basically given up on the Big 4 patterns because the Burda WOF patterns fit me so well. Do you have your brain fixed on this pattern? I found two Burda patterns that might work that are envelope patterns:
http://www.burdafashion.com/en/Patterns/Main_Collection/7897_Dress/1270778-1128998-1005105-1534469.html
http://www.burdafashion.com/en/Patterns/Main_Collection/8836_Dress/1270778-1128998-1005105-1377497.html
Dawn, the links didn't work. What are the pattern numbers? I don't know how "married" she is to this pattern. It's a duplicate of a Maggy London dress she's always wanted. It was hard to tell exactly from the tissue fit on the bust, so I'll need a muslin. I have some super ugle cotton that I can use! She works out a lot, but she gets her build from her dad...she just has large lats for how tiny she is. That's where the forward shoulder and round back come from too, I don't have that at all, even at my age.
Your daughter sounds like she has a similar shape to my DD, except her bust is small. I would sew a muslin, then slash and spread. You would end up with darts in the back, or gathers, due to the excess fabric, but look at that as a design detail ;-) Better the bodice fits right and the shoulders won't slide off. If you have forward shoulders and curved back, darts are unavoidable when correct fit is important.
That's the thing...the back looks just like the front. Nowhere to put darts or gathers. I have the pieces spread out before me as I work, hoping for a flash of insight!
That's odd about the links. They work for me. Oh, I see. Click on "Up Next on My Agenda" and you can see the entire link. Weird but it's abbreviated on this page. The numbers are 8836 and 7897.
Thanks, Dawn!
Weird...I just get this helpful error message:
Hoppla!
Error Code 404.
Das angeforderte Objekt wurde nicht gefunden.
I can find them with the pattern numbers, though.
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