Easter dress and pants fit update

I wore my dress today! You remember, the one I wasn't sure I liked.

And I love it!! The brown accents are fun and I love the length. It feels kicky and fun. The fit isn't bad, but I think I'm just getting more picky about fit. I'd have been thrilled to find anything that fit this well off the rack, so I'm pleased. That said, I think I'm going to need to start looking closer at the fit in my shoulders. I think I may need to start making a broad back adjustment as a standard change for me. I didn't in this dress and it pulls a bit when I cross my arms in front of my chest.

What about those pants I'm working on? I want to thank everyone for the comments, emails and links you all sent me. I love the support from the sewing community! You are all awesome!! Myrna, who has a similar figure to mine, reminded me of a similar journey that she made while fitting pants. Her posts here, here and here, were so helpful! I'm linking them for your benefit, but also so that I can find them again. The old memory just ain't what it used to be...
So, my next step will be to get a flexible curve to measure my own crotch curve more closely, but I did do some tweaking of the current pants to see what I could do just by deepening the crotch curve.

What do y'all think? I'm pretty happy with how well they fall now. It isn't perfect, but I'm calling it good enough.

Here is the altered pattern piece. The original seamline is in blue with my altered seamline in red. I dropped the crotch curve down nearly an inch and pinched out about 5/8 of an inch from the back waist. You can see how different the shape is from the original curve.

Joy had asked how the alteration affected the side seam, and I am happy to say, it is still nice and straight.

Pants fitting is very interesting. Everything is so interrelated, but not at all intuitive for me. I'm excited to have this pair coming along so nicely. Hopefully, I'll have a completed pair to show you in a couple of days. Every time I tried them on, Mitch asked if I was going to line them, so I finally took the hint and am adding a full lining.

Thanks again to everyone who helped me fine tune these. I so much appreciate all the help! It's so great to have so many educated eyes to scrutinize my work. You all rock!

Simplicity 2996

Well, after approximately 6453 miles of handsewing, I finished my Easter dress! I'm still not sure I'm completely in love, but there are some seriously great details in this dress. I really appreciated everyone's comments about styling this dress. Hopefully you can see where I have incorporated them. You all had some wonderful thoughts.

The pattern is Simplicity 2996, alas now OOP. It is a princess seamed shirtdress and includes cup sized pattern pieces - love that! The fabric is a poly rayon linen look from Hancock's. I used Pro-Weft interfacing on the facings and collar and Pro-Sheer Elegance on the hem.

I used the clean finish technique from Pam's blog for the facings, and the just look gorgeous. The edge is soft and smooth. Seam finishes were otherwise serged. I thought about lining this dress, but I really wanted it to be a breezy, summer-y dress, so I left it unlined.

Here is the sleeve detail. Isn't the little tab cute? The sleeve is faced rather than hemmed and the tab is caught in the facing.

After all of your great comments about styling this dress, I wanted an understated, but still pretty button that would fit into the vintage feel. I went withe these floral ones, since I felt they were versatile, but still sweet.

Here is the pocket. I'm not sure why it is so dark in this photo. The color in the other pictures is more true to life. Anyway, the pocket is inserted into the front princess seam. The welt is stitched down on the sides rather than inserted like a true welt pocket. I stitched it down by hand, as I didn't want there to be any topstitching on the dress. I really wanted to preserve the clean lines.

I really loved all of your ideas for dressing up this dress, particularly the suggestions for a contrasting belt or scarf. I think red will be great with it, but I was taken with Uta's idea of pairing it with brown, so here it is with a chunky brown and blue necklace and a brown belt. What do you think?

Simplicity 2996, fitting

I always find it helpful to see the process that others go through to get to the perfect fit, so I thought I'd share a bit of my process. Of course, the disclaimer need be said - this is the way I do it, not the only or even the best way, so I'd love any input about your personal fit journey and what works for you.

I am a big fan of FFRP, and I HATE making muslins, so I do most of my fitting on the pattern tissue.  I'm also an inveterate tracer, so all of my patterns are traced onto soil separator fabric before I start.  The great thing about that is that I can just baste together my main pattern pieces and go from there.  The above image is the front of my dress, without sleeves, collar, pocket, cuffs and facings. This pattern is cup sized, so I didn't have to do an FBA. I cut a size 10 with the D cup front and blended out to a 12 at the waist  and down to the hem. As you can see, the fit is pretty good!

The back. Perfect! I pinned it to my dressform for you to see, but I actually fit it on myself and use a full length mirror, with a hand mirror to check out the back. While fitting it on myself, I pin the pattern to my bra strap at center back to keep it in place. Since I'm essentially trying on my dress, I can check things like hem length and such at this point as well.

For some reason I tend to have too much length at CF, so that little tuck you see is a typical alteration for me.  I'll take that little wedge out of the pattern piece and straighten out the CF lines if needed. Poof, no neckline gaposis!
I think I'm ready to cut fabric!

ETA: Karin asked about the soil separator fabric that I use for tracing. I meant to talk a little about it because I LOVE IT! It is a plumbing product that is used in septic systems. In the states, you can get it at some hardware stores, although my local shops don't carry it, so I order it online. The kind I am using right now is made by Hancor. I order it from amazon.com, where it is called "geotextile fabric". I love this stuff for many reasons - it is sheer enough to easily see your pattern through, but sturdy enough to go through multiple uses. It drapes and can be sewn like fabric. And at 25 dollars for a 100 yard roll, it is about the cheapest tracing medium you can find. I have also used it as stabilizer for embroidery/applique and it works as a lightweight sew in interfacing. Brilliant!