It's All About The Fit, Part Two

Just to refresh your memory, I began with this vintage pattern.  

 The muslin made straight off the pattern, a horrible sack that I would not want to wear.

 In yesterday's post, I took it to this point, but there were still issues in the bust area.

In order to get rid of the gap in the center front of my dress, I moved the shoulders over. On the right side of the above picture you see the neckline. Typically, I would add to the front neckline, but in this case I would like my neckline to be a little more open so I will not add to the front  and just cut the extra away from the back neckline.

In this picture I have marked in my back neckline and I have transferred the marks I made for the small back neckline dart that I would like to add.

 I transferred the marks for where I would like to take up the side seams, 

 as well as the front darts.

 You can see the underarm dart that I would like to move to the princess line that I have drawn in.

I cut my dart open.

Then I closed the underarm dart. You can see that the fabric does not want to lay flat.

 Slash to the apex of the dart.

 Now the fabric lays nice and flat and the fullness of the dart has been rotated to the princess line dart.

In order to make sure that my side seams will match, I laid my front pattern piece on top of my back pieces and cut them all together at once.

You can see the layers in this picture.The back of my dress had minimal alterations so I was able to reuse those pieces for my next muslin, but I did cut a new front muslin.

 In the above picture you can see that I have made further alterations to the left side and on the right you can see the fullness in the side panel that needs to be adjusted.

 In order to fix this issue, open up the seam and move the fullness into the seam.

 Now pin the seams back together.

 Now the front of my dress lays nice and flat.

 As you can see, the armhole needed to be remarked.

 So I began with a sack,

 and now I have a dress that fits nicely over my bust. You do see some puckering in the seams. This will disappear once I clip my seams.

 After I took the dress off, I marked in the lines of my new seams.

And now I have my final pattern. I will make the dress in the fabric below before I cut the dress out of the fabric I have intended for the embroidery. The embroidery is done before the dress is put together so just in case there are any other issues, I would like to fix them before the embroidery is completed.

Yesterday a comment was made about a book on fitting by Sarah Veblan and that she moves the shoulders just as I did in order to remove the gap in the front. I have not read her book, but I do know someone who took her class and seemed to be quite happy. For further fitting help, this may be a book that you would like to look into. 

I hope my little fitting guide has been of some help. As soon as I get the test dress finished, I'll do a final post.