The Wedding Jacket Chronicle Part 3: Fitting Revelation (or Muslin Fitting 2)

I recently spent another afternoon getting Sunnygal Studio‘s help on fitting my jacket muslin and our final product was a revelation. It changed my entire relationship with sleeve caps and my shoulders. The earth moved, the stars aligned, and *BAM* I finally understood how to get a fitted garment well-fitted through my shoulders. I have always struggled to get garments nicely fitted through my shoulders (my fitting challenge is that I have a narrow ribcage but prominent shoulders) – either they dig into my underarm or I can’t lift my arms or I’m drowning in fabric to compensate. I’ve made all sorts of non-standard changes in all sorts of places in the sleeve, sleeve cap, and armscye and all to no avail. And now, I know EXACTLY what to do to EVERY SINGLE fitted garment that I sew with sleeves for the rest of my life. AMEN!

The changes that I had made in my first round of fitting with Beth brought both of my jacket muslins (Vogue V8333 and vintage McCalls 9905) to fitting very well through the torso. And the shoulders looked fine and weren’t pulling, but when I tried to lift my arms, I couldn’t even get them straight out to zombie height. Not good. So I mucked about with all sorts of changes and through them all into wads on the ground, and finally went back to Beth for more help.

On the vintage jacket we brought the shoulder seam in a fair bit (see the first picture (and mourn for my destroyed floral print jeans I re-used as muslin)). On both jackets, we added a LOT to the sleeve cap height. The Vogue jacket also got more fabric in the front side of the sleeve cap as well. But mostly, I made the exact same change on two totally different sleeves on two totally different jackets. Meaning, this is the change I need to be making on every single fitted sleeve cap from here on out. REVELATION!