B6453 Sew Along: How to Do an FBA

Hi ladies, a lot of you have been asking about how to do an FBA (Full Bust Adjustment) on this dress. I have teamed up with Palmer/Pletsch in order to provide you with some information. First, check out their Fitting Order information. It can often be confusing figuring out where to start with fit adjustments, especially when there are several things that need changing.

Next! Look at the Princess Bust Alterations document, specifically the information on an armhole princess adjustment. The method that Palmer Pletsch uses is tissue fitting, and there is step-by-step info on how to do this. Tissue fitting will tell you how much you need to add at the bust, and then you can make a muslin to test your fit.

Please post your muslin and fit pictures to the Facebook Group! It's been a great resource for questions of all kinds.

A huge thanks to Palmer Pletsch for allowing me to reprint this information on bust adjustments!

Fit documents: Copyright © 2016 by Palmer/Pletsch Incorporated (May be reproduced for educational purposes with credit). Information from Fit For Real People by Pati Palmer and Marta Alto. palmerpletsch.com 

FBA for Butterick 5882, the Shelf Bust Pattern

All right, my pretties! Here it is, at long long last: a tutorial for doing a full bust adjustment for my pattern Butterick 5882, otherwise known as a shelf bust dress. This is going to be a long post, so hang in there.

As I wrote in this post, I think this style could work for a larger bust since the mid-bust seaming minimizes the overall appearance of the bust (as well as making things look perky!).

Here's my version, see how the shelf bust starts at mid-bust?

Okay, on to the tutorial! Let me start by saying that there is no "one size fits all" approach to this since this dress requires a very precise fit. I'll take you through the process of how I fit the muslin on a padded dress form (I would estimate her bra size at a D cup or a bit more).

Here's the size 14 muslin, pre-FBA, pre-padded dress form so you can see the fit.

Now here it is with the bust padded out.

 You can see a myriad of problems: the dress is not covering the bust, the side seams are pulled forward, and the back zipper won't close. 

First, I measured the distance needed at the bust. The back gap was my indicator here, though you could go by pattern measurements compared to your own. 

My mannequin needs two inches added. Obviously, we need to add this at the bust, not at the back or side seams. 

These next pictures are meant to give you a visual of the changes needed. I opened up the underbust seam and then ripped out the stitches in the front princess seams. 

The princess gaps are 1" each, which together adds up to the 2" we need to gain. 

Now the upper bust pieces need to be made bigger to match. To demo this, I cut into the pleated inset section and the bias band below it.

Besides the extra room at the princess seams, this FBA also requires extra length in the bust. See how the midbust seam is spreading open in the photo above? I decided to also add 1" of length (see changes below.)

Okay, let's translate this to the flat pattern. 

1. First, I added 1/2" to the center front bodice (which is one half of the princess seam). 

2. Next, I added that extra length to the top of the pattern piece, tapering down to the original center front. 

3. Repeat on the bodice side front. 

4. Now, get out the "stay" piece. Slash and down the center, leaving a hinge at the top. Spread the pieces apart 1".

Add 1/2" to the bottom of this piece for extra length in the bust.

I also moved the dart back to its original position.

5. Now for the most complicated piece, the "bra." It has a ton of pleats and looks scary, but it isn't too bad to adjust. Slash and spread as you did for the stay piece.

Always re-draw the grain line and smooth out and rough edges caused in the process.

Adding length is the tricky part. You need to fold and pin all those pleats as they'll be sewn, after taping the pattern piece to a larger clean sheet of paper.

Add 1/2" to the bottom of the piece, tapering up to nothing at the right side.

Cut out the pattern piece with the pleats still folded.

Unfold and your new cutting lines are magically revealed!

Note: if you have to add a lot of length to the bottom of the pleated piece, I would recommend adding another pleat on each side (by slashing and spreading) to continue the pleats down to the bottom of the piece.

6. The last piece to adjust is the strap, which is the bias inset below the pleats. It needs to gain 1" at each princess seam to fit the adjusted pattern pieces. Between center front and the pattern notches, slash and spread the pattern 1" on each side, adding new tissue paper behing the slash.

7. Now it's time to test in muslin. I sewed up the lower bodice and did a quick fitting. There was a lot of bagginess below the bust.

I pinned this excess into the princess seams, contouring the seams below the bust.

This resulted in a new seamline, shown in pink below.

The muslin fit much better with that adjustment.

8. Construct the shelf inset portion of the bust, as well as the bias strap. Assemble everything together, sewing it to the bodice back and basting in a long zipper for fitting. Add boning for the fitting (see my tips here!).

Well, the great news is that the bodice now fits overall, closing perfectly in the back. I did notice some excess bunching in the lower part of the pleated bra part, however. So I ripped that portion out, and scooted it slightly down into the bodice. Much better!

 There you have it, readers. I hope you've found this helpful!

The B5814 Bodice Muslin!

Now may be the time to mention: Butterick 5814 is not a modest dress. (That's an understatement.) I don't wear a lot of really low-cut garments, so this muslin took some getting used to. I made sure to press under the seam allowances at the top, so I could really see the actual neckline, and then I showed Jeff the results.

Me: Is this too, um, revealing?
Jeff: Nope!

Men are so predicable sometimes.

But let's back up. I did have to make a couple adjustments to the muslin. When I first put it on, it looked like this. (Please excuse the cell phone photo.)

As you can see, the sleeves would not stay up at all. The fix for this took a couple steps. First, taking in the raglan sleeve seam on the front. See where it's pinned below?

On the pattern, I just shaved off 1/4" on that seam--on the bodice pieces and the front side of the sleeve. The revisions are in orange marker below.

The next adjustment I made was to add a seam to the top of the sleeve, so that I could curve it to fit my shoulder curve. See the red arrow in the photo below? That's how I want the top of my sleeve to curve.

This involved splitting the sleeve pattern piece into a front and back, drawing a new curved seamline, and then adding a seam allowance.

Here's how the new sleeve front piece looks.

When I pinned these changes on the muslin, the sleeves stayed up easily. Yay!

Other than that, I'm very happy with the fit.

I also checked the skirt measurements on the pattern tissue to make sure the amount of ease was correct for me.

I've also been working on a tutorial for adding a 3/4 length sleeve!

P.S. Several of you have been asking about the right bra to wear with this dress. In the photos I'm wearing a low-cut bra with wide-set straps, but they kept peeking out a bit. I would suggest either adding bra carriers to the sleeves, or wearing a strapless, waist-length bustier bra.

Coat Sew-Along: The Design Inspiration

Hello, readers! I am back home from a wonderful time at the American Sewing Expo. And now it's sew-along time! (Reminder: you can join the sew-along by joining this Flickr group.) Today, I wanted to write about my design inspiration for Butterick 5824, as I think it will give a better perspective on the intended fit of the coat.

The whole reason I wanted to do a line of patterns was to recreate vintage silhouettes that are hard to find for the home seamstress. You know that rare and iconic vintage pattern you've always wanted but costs $200 and is only for sale in a bust size 30"? That's what I'm talking about. For me, one of those designs was the 50s Princess Coat.

The Princess Coat is a direct descendent of Dior's 1947 New Look, which was marked by sloping shoulders, a dropped armscye, a nipped waist, and long full skirts.

In the early 50s, this style of coat became known as a Princess Coat. (Designer Lilli Ann made some of the most gorgeous styles, in my opinion.) If you look closely at the examples below, you'll see some of the design details I was most inspired by: very full skirts, dramatic collars, fitted waists, and loose kimono sleeves.

Lilli Ann coat

source

source

I used photographs of coats like these as I was designing Butterick 5824 and also sewing the blue sample coat that you see in the pattern photo. So I'm hoping that these visuals will also help you as you're fitting your coat. As you can see, the sleeve and underarm area is not meant to be fitted at all. You will have folds of fabric in this area, which is intentional. I know that moden fitting techniques have us believe that all drapes of fabric are "drag lines" and therefore bad. But in this case, it's part of the design. Dior even brought back this fit in several recent couture collections!

So there you have it, readers. I hope this was helpful! More sew-along posts coming at you all this month.