Thursday, December 8, 2016

Wadder I Care?

So, today I am serving up a wadder.




To boot, it is poorly photographed. This somehow seems appropriate for the gray weather this week.

I don't have many wadders in general, and my last few have all been fabric fails, rather than sewing fails. So, I'm feeling like I need to explore what went wrong with this BurdaStyle 08-2016 #103 flounce blouse, since my pretty swiss dot fabric is not to blame. 





I have a few RTW blouses that are very similar, at least from the front. Also, I find that Burda's sizing and drafting is very consistent - the fit is predictable on me. I picked my size based on my high bust and made only one change to the pattern, an FBA. And so I was generally optimistic that this would be reasonably successful.

Alas.




The blouse is enormous on me.

And the FBA didn't really work as I had hoped. It left things a little, errr, pointy.  Overall, the blouse was less fitted than I'd hoped. No matter how I tried taking it in, it still seemed shapeless. Or else it got distorted with pooling or pulling fabric at the back waist. So, I investigated the back... 

I think one of the main culprits in my fitting issue is that the back doesn't have darts. It has a simple pleat. So, the front of the blouse is designed to be fitted with darts, but the back is meant to be much less fitted.  I think this is a bit of a mismatch, and when I compared this pattern to the very similar RTW blouse I own, this is the major difference. The RTW blouse has darts on both the front and back.

The most surprising part of this is that, as I mentioned, Burda usually fits me very predictably, but this seemed very large on me.  That said, I hope that I will be able to save this very pretty swiss dot fabric which I underlined with cotton batiste. I've had Marfy 2155 in my pattern collection for some time. The fit is sure to be more trim.



It has princess seams on both the front and back. So, with any luck I will be able to get a good fit. That said, I'm not 100% sure when I will get back to this project. As the weather takes a turn for the colder, I am already working on wool trousers and some other cooler weather attire. Swiss dot may have to wait until spring, which I hope will be enough time for me to figure out how to sew those sleeves!