Fall for cotton - pattern cutting

Hi Internet World,

I have just completed cutting out the material for the jacket, so I thought I would share with you my pattern drafting for my over small shoulders, I prefer to say it that way round rather than the other (ie the rest of me being too big).  All the commercial pattern I have ever bought have the same problem they think when they adjust a pattern upwards in size it should go up in equal proportions all over. This I completely disagree with, my shoulders are no bigger than a size 12, it's just the rest of me that is, so I always have to draft downwards again over the shoulder area.

Very hard to see I'm afraid but you may just be able to work out that the two pattern sizes are overlaid on the printed sheet, now I'm not really sure looking at it what size 14 or 40 are. There is no finished waist or bust size I can see, but they are all I have to work with.             With this jacket I have decided to use the '40' for the bottom, waist and the bust and then use the '14' for the shoulders with a little jiggling around.

By measuring across all the patterns pieces around where the waist will be I reckon it should be about my waist size, and if not I can adjust the small triangle inset bits to work out any difference, so I feel fairly secure in cutting out the pattern pieces straight on to the material and not doing a test dummy, I can easily cut some more inset triangles if I find I need to adjust the waist. As for the shoulders they are quite the '14' so they have to be trimmed down some more.

Here is my jiggling about, you can just about see where
I have drawn the new shoulder seams ready to be cut.

So the back and shoulder seam have had about 1 inch reduced off them. I use to find this a bit of a pain trying to get a decent curve around my new arm holes until I bought (from ebay) a set of french curves and I have to say they are marvelous I use them all the time now, especially in the bullet bra drafting, but I will write a blog on how that is coming along soon.

And starting to cut

So the material is all cut out now and I've had a nice break and a cup of tea, so back upstairs for some more sewing, but not on this.  Some lovely 100% wool felt arrived this morning so I feel a hat a calling, after all that is what I am suppose to be doing.

speak soon, 

love ally x