V8795 - Muslin #something.5 - the Last one. Really.

I futzed and fussed on this all evening.   And it was worth it!  Even if I don't end up with "perfection" (whatever that is) on this jacket, I have learned SO much about fitting, mostly thanks to the wonderfully helpful hints from the sewists over at Stitchers Guild, and especially thanks to the thoughtful comment that the fabulous dr. e made in yesterday's post, which I swear has given me more confidence and helpful hints about fitting in one short page than entire books that I've read!

Following her advice, I was feeling optimistic enough to continue with some sleeve adjustments, which I'll do my best to document with some degree of clarity here...

I removed one sleeve, marked the grainline on the fabric from the the shoulder seam down, and pinned it back in place.  You can see the grainline marked in pen here:

I unpinned the sleeve, moved the seamline placement dot back about 1/2", drew a new grainline (in green) down to the wrist, rotated the sleeve forward to match up the new dot at the seamline, and pinned the sleeve back on:

You can see that the new grainline is set just a bit further back from the original, but still sits pretty far forward on the arm.   There will be more about this later....  However, a lot of the poofiness in the sleeve cap has been evened out between front and back.

Here's a shot of the back at this point.  I've done nothing to the left sleeve, and you can already see the difference!  I'm noticing a more distinct difference in the slope of my shoulders though...it may be time to find another bodyworker....  hmpf.

Next step was to unpin the sleeve cap above the notches, and smooth them into the armhole.   This is where a fit buddy could really come in handy!   Alas, I was not able to conjure up a fit buddy, and the cats are utterly worthless when it comes to handling pins.

Sleeve stitched back in place.   Looking better....not there yet......  I also shortened the jacket - it's just rough pinned in place, but it's definitely improving the overall hang!

Back, shortened.  Better!

The right arm is looking much much better from all sides!

Here's the (already much altered!) sleeve with the new seam line marked.   I made even more changes after this, but that was a lot of excess removed from the front!:

After another little adjustment.  Or two.  Or maybe 3.... and here's what my sleeve looks like overlaid on the original:

I mentioned in yesterday's post that I had removed over 1/2" of fabric from the back at the upper end of the side seam.   A little light bulb went off today and I realized that I also needed to remove some fabric from the armscye above the side seam, so that the armscye curve would still be in sync with the sleeve cap.   Sorry, no picture of this, but I hope the concept makes sense.

Another light bulb came on when I laid my sleeve on top of the original - see the green line that actually DOES run from the shoulder seam to the wrist?  That's the new grainline (the one I drew originally is squiggled over), and here's the twist - the new line actually matches the grainline on the original pattern!   With all of the tweaks I had done, and mostly, I think, when I did the broad arm adjustment, the grainline was thrown off when I cut the pattern piece.   That alone will probably take care of some of the remaining wrinkles when I cut into the Fashion Fabric (FF).  I hope.....

I made some adjustments to the hemline, tweaked the sleeve cap a bit more, and by Jove, I really do think I've (almost) got it!  The right arm in the following pic has had more of the final adjustments done to it than the left:

But even the left side isn't looking too bad (I still have some hemline tweaking to do here though):

For the life of me I could NOT get a decent picture of the back...by the time I twisted around to get the camera bleeping with the remote, I couldn't seem to get standing straight in time for the pic, but that's life, eh?

I daresay I'm ready to cut into the FF!   Have I mentioned that it has stripes?   That I'll need to match up on the curves in the back and side seams?   Because I wouldn't want you to think that it's all going to be so terribly easy from here on out.   Let's just hope that the knit factor of the FF doesn't leave me with a baggy mess, after all this fitting!

But even if it does, I've learned more than I dreamed I would in this process, and it feels like a mini-course in fitting.

And that feels pretty good :)

ETA:  4 a.m.  I couldn't stop.
FF is all cut out except for sleeves, & I've started assembling it.
LOVING it!
Started making mistakes = Bedtime.
Sweet dreams :)