Despite the fact that my garden is in its most glorious state of the year, with wildflowers and roses blossoming in wild enthusiasm…

I’ve been forcing myself indoors. I’m in the throes of jacket-making in the sew-along and am determined to stay in it. To learn. I like crunchy deadlines and intense work periods. Followed by completely pooped out and distracted periods. I just learn best this way.

I learned to sew patterns right out of the envelope without any sort of altering, fitting, slashing, pivoting. Never had even heard of muslins. I had pretty hilarious ways of hacking as I was sewing to get things to fit. Like the ginormously high-waisted tuxedo pants I made in college; they got years of wear and deserve to be enshrined somewhere near my Doc Martens. The crotch was so low and dorky that I kept sewing and picking out and sewing until I had this even weirder baggy crotch and I took to wearing the things around with safety pins to hold the pants in the shape I wanted. And I wasn’t trying to be punk rock or anything.

Now I’m kind of a bug about pattern perfection. Staring at pieces and redrawing them over and over gives me some kind of mathematical high. And I think I finally got my muslin down to something that works. A few stages:

I was taking in, then taking more in, then taking more in. (Which, by the way, is a great way to relieve hiccups. Seriously, it works.)

The last four or five patterns I’ve made seem to swim on my upper body, and I’ve taken to sewing at least a size or two down from what the measurements suggest. This Marfy pattern is the smallest size they offer, and I thought, “Italian. Means more fitted.” Right? Wrong.

My experience with Italian–and even more so French–clothing is that the upper body is quite slim. Sleeves and shoulders are slim, armholes are higher, and the overall silhouettes tend to be more fitted on top. Even street stores like H&M tend to feel tight above the bust if I try to go down a size.

Anyway. I’ve wrangled this pattern down to something that hopefully skims me a bit better. I slashed and overlapped and did a hack version of this “Small Bust Adjustment”. Despite its swimmy fit, the Marfy pattern is designed quite well. The pieces fit together well, there’s minimal sleeve cap ease, no bizarrely mismatched seams as I’ve experienced in other patterns. This is a good thing. I have no patience for pattern frenemies. I don’t like hacking anymore. For me, even using hand-sewing as a way to fix pattern problems has always been reminiscent of experiences like those trousers.

I have a way to go before I understand my own fit but at least I’ve got these intense learning experiences to force some of it to happen faster.