The last muslin. This time I mean it. Really. I swear.

As someone who doesn't often sew true muslins, I'm really going overboard now. I made the last adjustments detailed in the blog entry just below this one and cut another muslin. That makes number 5, if you're counting. I won't bore you with how I screwed up those last adjustments and ended up 4 inches wrong on the sideseams, only because I have no idea how I did that. I untaped and started over and everything lined up great for the second go. Whew! I must've still been in shock that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won yesterday in the last 30 seconds of the game.



So there it is. And for an added happy accident bonus, I love how the stripes ended up on the side panels, so I'll definitely be incorporating that somehow into the final version. I say "happy accident" because I had to cut those panels on the crossgrain as I was short on fabric. Making all these muslins sure is putting a dent in the ugly section of my stash, and that particular fabric was leftover from cornice boards I made for my previous house. The cheetah print? No, not so much. I'll be losing that. (And the crowd sighs in relief.)

The only changes left to make to the pattern paper are to (1) narrow the shoulders, which is a regular adjustment for me. I left it until last to see just how much after final muslin and sleeve were sewn. And (2) to scoop out a bit of the front neckline so the crossover happens at a more visually pleasing location. I.e., not at the exact center of a boobie. You can see how I've folded it over on the muslin. Oh, and (3), I might make the collar a bit longer but I'm still deciding on that.



During this journey I've learned that I have a Short Upper Rib Cage, per Fitting & Pattern Alteration, A Multi-Method Approach (Liechty, Pottberg, Rasband). I've kind of known that I was shorter from shoulder to bust than most patterns, but I didn't think *I* was particularly short there nor would I ever have called it a Short Upper Rib Cage. In fact, it took me a few tries to even find this in that book (page 277) because I wasn't thinking ribs and totally skipped over that section in the index.

"The bones forming the upper rib cage area are lighter than average; the spacing between the adjacent ribs maybe closer. The length decreases from the
shoulder to the bustline. [Ah HAH!] The length variation may affect the length of the joints or the space between the arm hinge and the bustline. [Double Ah HAH!]"

Sometimes just for kicks, I read the descriptions for figure anomolies that I don't have ... the descriptions are so strange and clinical. Yes, I'm easily amused.

Here's one I particularly like:

"The muscles and the soft tissues forming the contour of the inner thigh areas are less developed than average. When the person stands, there is a definite visible space between the legs from the crotch nearly to the knee."

Now how good does that sound to a thunder-thighed woman like myself? It makes those enviable thin thighs ("shallow" in F&PA speak) sound like a figure FLAW! As if.

But seriously, I do like this book and find myself looking to it as often as I take Fit for Real People (Palmer/Pletsch) off the shelf. F&PA includes diagnoses and solutions for a lot more figure idosyncracies. But the two books definitely go hand in hand, because although F&PA has more analyses, the solutions are often cryptic and hard to figure out exactly what's been slashed, pivoted, or otherwise altered from the drawings. FFRP gives you a good foundation for slash/spread, which helps to figure out F&PA.

Will I cut the real fabric today? I hope so, but first I've got to return some tuxedos to the rental store, get some groceries and do a few more errands.