I am pleased to announce that we are a go! My unaltered muslin of the bodice just was not happening, so I went back to the pattern and used my handy freezer paper to make some adjustments.
Most patterns are drafted with a B cup bust. And, well, I have way more than that up top. I measured my bust and decided to try a full bust adjustment because the difference would make up a lot of those inches in the back. I followed these instructions from Sew, Mama, Sew! for how to make a full bust adjustment on princess seams. If you want to try this yourself, I suggest you follow her tutorial, since she has respectable and clear pictures without all the background clutter that I have here.
First, here is the unaltered pattern which I laid out for tracing. You can kind of see how slight the curve is so really, I should have known this was not going to handle my bust.
Note: lay out your pattern pieces the same way you would on actual fabric. If it says cut on fold or cut two, for example, go ahead and do that. Here is a traced off piece. Also, make sure you label them once you trace them. I also had to do some fiddling to find the bust point since it wasn't marked on my pattern. (Fiddling equals eyeballing and boobage poking.)
And here, is the final bodice side front. I spread like five inches here.
You also want to make sure that you lengthen the bodice front as required. Here is the altered bodice side front as compared to the bodice front. See how it is longer.
Here it is evened out. You want to spread the same distance so don't just eyeball this. Measure.
Now it's time to put your paper pieces together. Follow the seam allowances called for in the pattern. I tried to stitch mine on the sewing machine. People stitch paper right? That didn't work well for me, but you might want to try it yourself. My stitches were so close together that it ended up kind of cutting the paper. I ended up pin fitting it along the sides.
Pin fitting on pattern tissue sucks, but freezer paper didn't tear or rip unless I applied focused force so it worked out pretty well.
The finished product. Easing the curves in creates the bodice curve.
Here it is on me. I didn't put a zipper in or anything but I did put on my strapless bra to try it. This was just to pin fit the pattern.
This is a much better fit than the first, unaltered muslin. It comes up higher in the front and fully covers my breast. More to the point, it now meets in the back.
Next steps:
I need to take this apart and retrace these altered pieces and transfer and relocate markings.
I think I'm going to buy some plain muslin to fit as well so I can have a nice clear background and to get a better feel for how it looks along the upper edges and pin out any extra fabric.
I also have plans for sweethearting the bodice front.
Then, I think I will probably add more boning and more support to the bodice than the pattern calls for.
I also think I'm going to use a skirt from another pattern so hopefully I will only need to adjust for length there.
Then . . . I will take apart that muslin and use those pieces to cut out the pattern for the real deal wedding dress. Definitely a long way to go but I'm excited to be making progress.
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