19. Whoops...

Did I say "last" muslin fitting? My bad... ;)

So, over the last couple of days it has slowly dawned on me that I did something foolish during our fitting on Sunday. For some reason I took out all of the "slack" in the bodice along the back center seam.

While I think I ended up with an accurate measurement of how much the bodice needs to tighten up, I can't just take it all out of the back center seam without considering how that will impact the location and alignment of the other seams on the dress. For example, that might pull the side seams back so that they no longer fall along the side of Susan's body.

In addition, as I think I mentioned in my last post, the amount to come out along the top of the bodice is larger than it is at the bodice-skirt seam, which could result in (brace yourself!) side seams that aren't perpendicular to the floor.

I'm not sure exactly what horrible things will happen as a result of this, but I'm pretty sure that it can't be good - probably something about the dress not hanging or moving nicely.

So, Susan and I are meeting at the gym tonight to climb, and I'm taking the muslin with me. We will do a quick assessment in the changing room. I even remembered to bring my homemade plumb line - an empty thread spool tied at the end of a long piece of thread. You hold the thread under her arm and let it hang straight to the ground - the goal is to align the side seam with the thread line.

My goal is to figure out how much of the overall slack should be taken out at each of the possible locations (seams and darts), in order to maintain the appropriate locations and positions of all of the seams and darts. THEN I'll be ready to mark these seam lines on the muslin, take the muslin apart, and use the muslin pieces as the pattern pieces for the real fabric.

Thank goodness this occurred to me before it was too late… ;)