Presenting Muslin #2

Muslin #2 is mostly done. I still have to sew in the sleeve, give the collar a practice run and redraft the front facing to match my alterations, but it's late and I'm going to save all that for tomorrow. I'm 99.99% sure that once I align the sleeve into the armhole the way it is actually supposed to go, the twisty problem will be gone.

My final tweaks to the bodice are perfect on the front (although it's hard to tell on Zillie) and near-perfect on the back. Moving the princess seams inward was a good call. The bust area fits better and doesn't make the girls look as "widespread" as before. The back fits and falls much nicer too. There are still some wrinkles back there but I really don't want an overfitted denim jacket so I'm not going to obsess about them. I'll be wearing it open most of the time and I won't see them in real life anyway. Some of the wrinkles are also because I decided to not shorten the shoulder to waist length any more than the 3/8" I already removed. If the waist seam sits at my actual waist in the front, I look like I'm even more all bust than usual. The additional length, even though it affects the back fit a bit, is a better illusion for both sides of me.


Unfortunately, I *still* sewed the #$@!! lower section onto the sleeve backwards. Or, more correctly, I sewed the left band to the right sleeve. At least this time I didn't sew it on upside down too, so the mystery flare is gone. Obviously, I will need to baste the real ones in place and triple-check them before I commit. ;-) Yeah, I'll probably still sew one on wrong.

Claire asked in a comment about my muslin fabric. For this jacket, I'm using actual unbleached muslin purchased by the bolt from Joann's with a coupon. Amazingly, this bolt is the first true muslin fabric I've used for fitting. In the past, I've used clearance and Walmart ugly cottons and ugly knits. But I've used up pretty much all of the cheap uglies in my stash so it was time for a restocking and I decided muslin was better to mark on, cheap, and easier to store.

My final jacket fabric is a stretch woven. The muslin is not. I chose to use non-stretch muslin for fitting because I don't want the Lycra in the final fabric to be compensating for fit issues. This way, the Lycra will provide an increased comfort factor but not an increased fit level. At least that's the plan.