polonaise, Victorian style, here I come

I'm continuing to be wishy-washy about the trimming on the skirt so I turned my attention to the Picnic bodice. I got the first mock-up cut, sewn and fitted. Due to my unfortunate DNA I did as much re-designing/drafting as fitting. I just can't leave a pattern alone, especially one that has been made up as-is as much as TV410. I was going to use this as the example for my Fitting class at CosCol but now I'm thinking not, too confusing I think.


(The first pic is the orginial pattern without any changes, the next two are after I finished futzing)

The fitting went well, mostly tweaking the things that are standard tweaks on TV patterns for me. The front fit relatively well but the back was way too short. Even factoring in a slightly high waist the back pleat was way too high for me. Weird. That whole sort-of-dart-instead-of-side-seam thing didn't work well for me either (didn't think it would, being so hippy) so lots of futzing there. Probably the biggest change was to shift the angle of the bottom front. I decided I wanted it to button to the waist then angle back slightly. I’m hoping to adjust the darts for a prettier sweep back and to avoid awkward bunching at the hips. Frankly I'm hoping to make it more like the illistration than the actual pattern...