I had an oops

I had decided to increase the depth of the tucks made to change my sloper from woven to knit. My knit slope had a bit of crease to it so I took the iron to it.  To bad I didn’t check the iron’s heat setting first because my sloper with its plasticky side melted immediate. Oh well. I quickly traced my woven sleeveless sloper again and then applied 1/2″ horizontal tuck at the armscye notch and a 1/4″ tuck vertically beginning at the shoulder dart. I decided to increase the shoulder slope 1/8″ before truing the armscyes, hem and shoulder.  Last, but I’ve learned very important, I walked the seams. Imagine my surprise to find that the back side seam was 1/4″ shorter than the front. I don’t understand why that would change and it changed between waist and hem.  Above the waist notch and I would have thought the bust dart was having an effect. The original’s side seams matched when they were walked. Somehow copying and making those few small alterations also changed the side seams.  So now I had a base knit sloper which included darts and a jewel neckline.  I copied it.  Moved the front vertical darts to side seams, split the back vertical darts between side and center back;  and split the shoulder dart between armscye and center back.   I added 1/4″ seam allowance to the back. Trimmed excess and walked the seams yet again. This time all was well. So then I scooped the front neckline.  I never want a jewel neckline with sleeveless tops.  Sleeveless is a temperature cooling garment. A wider, more open neckline helps keep that cooling going on.

I chose another ITY and cut my pieces. Taped armscyes and neckline before serging the shoulder seams and binding the neckline. I basted the side seams together for the first fitting. Then with great pleasure I finished armscyes; stitched side seams and hemmed. I could nit pik this garment, but I prefer to just accept it.  It’s good.  Better than anything I can find in RTW.  It fits me better than what I commonly see.  The only thing I will change is to scoop out the entire armscye about 1/4″.  I wasn’t sure if the armscye would be too close until I’d rather not rip out all the serging, stitching and cover stitching. So I’ll just make the change to my pattern.

 

This was so kewl.  I had a new, nicely fitting garment in about 2 hours; and because of the oops, I had a nice neat pattern too.