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Hello everyone!

Hope you are all having a good week! Mine has been busy with work seeing little sewing action. I do have a post about my Sewaholic Granville muslins.

I bought this pattern along with the Oakridge blouse during the 33% off sale. Bargain!

I read pattern reviews and learnt that Sewaholic drafts specifically for a pear shaped figure. I knew that there would be a lot of work on my part to fit my as yet unfigured out body shape. I have no idea how I would classify my shape consequently I pay very little attention to that when buying patterns. I just see something I like and I go for it.

I digress, ok back to the good stuff….. 

Muslin numero 1 was made up in a stripey linen. I blocked off an entire weekend to fit until I got a working pattern. And it took that weekend and more!

I cut a size 4 and sewed it up. Enjoyed the process of the burrito yoke method.

Fit wise there was way too much fabric at the back but the bust was fine. Yeahy! No bust adjustments!

Left picture showing back with the pooling fabric – swayback. Pics 2 and 3 post adjustments.

For the back I had no idea what to do so I pinched out the side seams. When that didn’t work I took to Instagram and IG buddies came to the rescue. I took a wedge out of the center back in an unconventional way.

From what I gather (after I had done my unconventional fix) a traditional swayback adjustment is when you take the fabric out on the horizontal line but i took my wedge out vertically. I pivoted along grainline IYSWIM. It made sense at the time I was doing it and  it seemed to do the trick. I also pinched abou 1/4″ out the yoke piece. Once I did those adjustments I was happy enough with the fit to move on to the sleeves!

Pattern pieces that had the most change were the side backs and the back center pieces. The original pattern is underneath the adjusted one.

The plackets were a real nightmare. I have had issues with those on both muslins so next time I am using a placket template I found through a Youtube tutorial here. I cut my losses and moved on to fitting the sleeves. They were fine but I didn’t like the way the sleeves kind of dropped off my shoulder. So I raised my sleeve cap ( still not to sure what this means but in my head it means pinching out the top bit of the sleeve so the seam is sitting on top of my shoulder). And that did the trick.

I then transferred my pattern changes. Once that was done I cut out the next muslin. End of weekend.

The next weekend I sewed up Numero 2. The light weight chambray was just divine! It has such a fantastic drape and handle – cutting and sewing it was such a pleasure. I get excited just recalling how lovely it was to work with ;-). Due to the placket issue I abandoned the sleeves and made it sleeveless with bias bound armholes.

So here it is! I am very happy with the fit. 

Verdict: “The harder the battle the sweeter the victory” ….it took a lot of time and effort. There were many times I wanted to give up but it is so worth it! I have cut out 2 more already that need to be sewn up. An awesome pattern if you dare to put in the graft to sort out the fit but if you are lucky enough to be pear shaped you might just get the perfect fit straight out of the packet!

Speaking of pear shape do you know what your body shape/type is?  I never noticed that Vogue McCalls patterns have body shape recommendations on them…Does it even matter? Or is being able to fit any pattern to your body the sewing skill to aim for? Share your thoughts down below!

Thanks for clicking by and as always happy sewing!

Hila

xox

Added 23/05/2015

Here is a diagram trying to show how I dealt with my pooling fabric. Its not a sanctioned method or anything its just what I did – in fact there are probably many thing wrong with how I did but I got lucky and it did the trick for this project. So I guess it a lucky fluke.