Fitting myself - Lowering a bust point

I am in the process of making myself a sheath dress and this is a project that needs a muslin made first.  Mainly because I have VERY LITTLE fabric and it is something I will be wearing in front of a lot of people.

This is for that thing I still can't talk about. The thing I had to make my quick dress form adjustment for.  I will tell you all about it in 2 1/2 weeks ... EEK! I've got a lot to do until then.

Anyway, I digress.  Here is how I fit myself and lowered the bust point on this pattern.

Here is my sketch.

And here is the pattern I'm using to speed things along.

In addition to fitting the basic shape on me, I want to raise and widen the neck a bit and bring the armhole out to make a kind of cap sleeve.

First, to get in and out of this by myself, I slap a zipper in the back ... any old zipper.

Then try it on for a basic fit check.

I am lucky to be a fairly standard size. But, there are a couple things I want to fix.  The big one being the bust point on the pattern is about 1" too high for me.  Notice I didn't say my bust point is too low!! See ...

Bust darts should end about 1" away from the actual bust point and my bust point is just at the end of these darts, so I need to lower the darts on the pattern.

Now, I have already made a copy of my commercial pattern, because I knew I would be changing things.  You can see I also nipped in the waist a tiny bit and to make my capped sleeve work, I have pinned a curve in the shoulder seam and lowered the point where the side seam stops below the armhole.

And when fitting something that should fit tight, it's not a bad idea to sit in it. I speak from experience!

The next step is to take the muslin off, mark all the places I've pinned, take the muslin completely apart, press the pieces flat and then transfer those markings to my paper copy of the pattern.

I used a regular old pen to mark every place I have pinned things.

I lay the pressed out pieces of my muslin on top of the paper pattern pieces, line things up and then use a tracing wheel to mark the places I want to change. The tracing wheel will leave little holes or depressions in the paper that have to be drawn over with a pencil.

Drawing a side seam or vertical dart in or out is pretty straight forward.  Lowering a horizontal bust dart is a little trickier. This is how I do it.

The red lines are my changes. I've lowered the vanishing point of the vertical dart, tapering it from the waistline points, and marked the new placement for the horizontal dart.

Next, I trace the dart onto a separate piece of paper.

I then move the dart down to where I want it, and tape it in place.

To even up the side seam, fold the dart as if it were being sewn, connect the side seam and then trim off the edge with the seam allowance you are using, for me 5/8".

This will give you the correct "return" for the inside fabric of the dart. You can also see in this photo the correction I made for the cap sleeve and neckline.

I will post photos of the finished dress, with me it in at this upcoming event.

Actually, it's not SO secret.  It is a fashion show to raise money to provide dental work for poor people in Thailand.  And, I volunteered to do this before I even went to Thailand.  

more later ...