Wonky Darts

Bust darts have given me fits in the tops and jackets that I've sewn so far. At first, I thought that it was me and some strange dart ineptitude that I have, but then I noticed that my waist/butt darts never seem to have the same problem. My bust darts usually seem to be overly pointy, and I have a heck of a time getting them to lay flat.

Fairly recently, I realized that it might not all be my fault. I usually have to do a pretty large FBA to accommodate my bust, and this usually results in a huge bust dart. I've started playing around a little bit with rotating the bust dart elsewhere. The Emily blouse has been my first attempt at splitting the bust dart into a second dart (in this case, I used an armhole dart, which someone had recommended to me)...but *sigh* this clearly didn't fix the problem of my wonky darts:


Here's a closer look at my oh-so-prominent dart:


And a front view (ignore the fact that there's too much ease in the sleeve cap and that the blouse has no waist shaping--I can fix those things):



This is a muslin (thank you $1/yard swap meet fabric) that I went ahead and finished to practice collars, shaped hems, etc. But, I'd like to make this again and actually try to make this work. Sadly, even as wonky as my bust darts are, they don't look as bad as they usually do, so I think that I may have been onto something with my gigantidart theory...just that I didn't decrease the dart size enough with this one. My thoughts on what I'd like to change for my next version:

• I hate the armhole dart. I'm rotating the bust dart excess to a waist dart next time.
• I think the bust dart is still too big--I'll rotate out more excess next time.
• I think that I lowered the bust dart too much. I usually lower my darts 1/2-1", but when I did the tissue fitting this time, it looked like I'd need to lower them by 1 1/2"...which I think was too much.

Any fitting gurus out there have any other thoughts?

Next up: Emily

I'm currently about 1/3 of the way through sewing up 5 pairs of boxer shorts for David, assembly line style. By the time that I'm done with these, I'll have totaled making 9 pairs of boxers in the past year. Yeah, I'm a little burnt out on boxers at this point. At least I won't have to look at my boxer shorts pattern again for another 6 months or so after this.

And, after I'm done with these, I'm back to sewing for myself again. I entered the Advanced Beginner sewing contest on PatternReview. My goal is to make my first fitted (although the pattern says "semi-fitted") blouse for myself. If I'm successful, it'll be the first time in years that I've had a shirt that buttons without being huge elsewhere.

I'm using the BurdaStyle Emily blouse pattern for this project. It's your basic darted women's blouse. I tissue fitted it over Memorial Day weekend....and it was a total PIA. I needed a huge FBA on this one (shocking, I know) AND had to lower the bust dart more than normal. I wound up combining the new Palmer/Pletsch Y-shaped FBA on this *and* still split the bust dart and rotated part of it into an armhole dart to avoid Gigantidart syndrome on this one. I've got my muslin cut out, but haven't sewn it up yet. We'll see how this looks in the muslin and if it looks like it'll be worth working through.

If it *does* turn out okay, I'd love to make up a few of these. I went on a mini-spending spree that was funded by my recent Etsy shop windfall at Fashionista Fabrics and picked up a couple of really nice stretch cotton lawns there. If the muslin shows promise, I'm planning to use these for my "real" version(s).