FITTING: By Hand London 'Anna' muslin/toile with sway back adjustment, neck darts & repositioned side seam (part 4).

By now I am sure you are sick to death of my posts and tweets on this topic. I am a woman possessed!! Just make the fucking thing already, right?

Well, now I can!!! I finally got the fit right on my muslin.

After making what felt like two hundred adjustments, the Anna dress is ready to be made up in my beautiful floral cotton voile.

After I did the erect back/short back and shoulder seam adjustments the waistline was still dipping and there was some gaping at the front neck.

I ended up doing a 2.5cm sway back adjustment and took 4cm wedges out of the neck.

As you can see, the neck fit better, the waist was level, but the side seams were still swinging forward. 

I was going to ignore the swinging side seam, but I realised that it would probably affect the way the front of skirt sits on my body, forcing the skirt side seam to swing forward, creating some weird bump... so off to Google I went and I found this:

SOURCE

I think instructions "add/subtract twice (abc)" mean you add/subtract on both left and right (ie twice) because they were repositioning the side seams on a sloper whereas I repositioned the side seams on my pattern piece so I didn't add/subtract (abc) amount twice.

I also repositioned the skirt side seams so the bodice and skirt side seams will match up.

The erect back adjustment of 3cm lowered my back neckline, so I added 2cm back into the CB and neckline. Maybe the erect back adjustment wasn't needed?

 So now, I present to you the muslin that has consumed the last fortnight of my life...

Side seam: before and after. I've have since added 2cm to the front bodice length.

Bodice caving in at the top

No more gaping.

There are also some wrinkles on the back and under the arms, but I can't be fucked making another muslin take on another issue right now so I'll turn a blind eye. The wrinkles don't bother me that much.

I have already cut out my floral cotton voile and plan on sewing it this Saturday to wear to a 30th birthday party and a housewarming (both on Sunday). If the wrinkles on this floral version bother me, then I will make more adjustments so that the rayon version I plan to make for my friend's wedding will be perfect. 

Even though it was a frustrating and long winded process, I have to say I enjoyed the challenge. I have learnt a lot of things about my body. Hopefully the next pattern I make (probably Georgia, for the sewalong) won't be as difficult, as I now now what my body issues are and how to fix them.

Speaking of the Georgia Sewalong, I believe that is happening this weekend! Yayyyyy! Who's in???

So now that my fitting dramas with Anna are over, what will I tweet about now? Hahahhaha. 

Thank you every one for your advice, for emailing and linking me to tutorials, for diagnosing my 'issues', for encouraging me and for putting up with the hundreds of #annadress #fittingwoes tweets (especially those followers that DGAF about sewing... who would never read this blog to see this, anyway).

I leave you with a pretty picture of my floral cotton voile, a 22" American Beauty invisible zipper and thread #733.

Happy Australia Day long weekend :)