If you've found your way to my obscure little corner of the internet, then I'm positive you'll have seen Tilly drop the Seren and Stevie patterns last week. Beauts, right? I would love to be a Seren-wearer, but I just can't let myself make another dress until I start wearing the ones that I have.
As soon as I saw a picture of the back of Stevie, I knew the top version was going to be a queue-jumper - and sure enough, I've made two this weekend. Both fabrics were from my stash, the sailboats were a gift (but came from Sea Salt), and the chambray was a Fabric Land leftovers from and Anna dress I made some time last year.
It's not the most intimidating project in the world, but I made enough dodgy New Look 6217's last year to know that it's not as easy as it sounds, either. My biggest problem was that I just didn't have a good enough idea of fitting, or more specifically, I didn't know what the right adjustments were for my body - it's hard for me to be objective when I look in the mirror. Everything in the top realm was just a bit dodgy - gaping neckline and tightness around the bust, and I have a hunch that I have a sway back, too. I toyed with full bust adjustments and pinching out the gaping necklines, but they all created more problems than they solved, and I was really just at a bit of a loss about what was wrong. This is a big part of the reason why I just haven't sewn a lot over the past year or so, it just got pretty frustrating spending hours on things that didn't turn out right.
Finally, something clicked when I listened to the episode of Love to Sew with Melissa Watson. First off, Melissa mentioned that she fit the back of garments before the front. This made total sense to me, but it really wasn't advice I'd heard before. And then one of the hosts (I think Helen) mentioned a broad back adjustment, and there it was! Of COURSE I have a broad back. Every time I try on a jacket or shirt I end up sizing up because I can't reach my arms forward. I'd say I've read quite a lot of blogs since I started sewing about 18 months ago, but I don't think I'd ever heard of a broad back adjustment, until then. The closest I'd come across before was a broad shoulder adjustment, but I knew that was wrong because straps are usually too far apart on me and fall off
So, I started to play around with broad back adjustments, and while it definitely seemed like the right first step, it had by no means solved all my issues. When I saw Tilly's new pattern I decided to use it as a basis for some testing since I've always found her patterns fun, and really trust her measurements. So, I sized down from a 4 to 3, did my adjustment, and made it up in this lovely sailboat cotton.
First off, the pattern is a lot of fun to make. There's also a lovely Tilly-tip for turning the neck ties that blew my mind, and now I really can't figure out why I've been faffing around with safety pins for all this time. The only changes I made to the design were adding french seams and top-stitching the front neck band - aside from sitting better, on the chambray one I really felt like it needed just a little more detail at the top.
The back shoulder area was fine after my adjustment, but I was left with a weird mass of fabric around what I'll call my "front bra strap" areas - this is hard to photograph, but there really is a lot even though the fit around the neck, top of my shoulders and full bust looked fine. I figured I needed to remove some of the excess that I'd created with my adjustment, so I googled narrow chest adjustment and made another version, which was definitely an improvement.
Now the fit looks better (to me, anyway), but I do think a sway back adjustment would help things along. A slight niggle is that the back neck band seems to sit quite low on me compared to the models, but I'm not sure how to fix that without negating the work I've done already.
Still, I feel like I'm finally on the right track to making things that fit. I bought some linen viscose from Sew Over It a while back, so I'm toying with using that for my next Stevie, but I might try out the button back for that one.
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