I finished the muslin for the Go Patterns Little Black Dress last night. It was rather fetching in its recycled-Hendrik-duvet-cover material, orange basted seams, sharpied notches, unfinished hems and zipperless back!
My measurements matched up really closely to a size 14 for this (usually I’m a 16 in Big Four, or 42 in Burda WOF or KnipMode, or 12 UK RTW), but there’s only the tiniest amount of ease because it was very form fitting. The bodice fit me perfectly in the shoulders, bust, and ribcage, though I’ll need to increase the waist by about an inch to be comfortable. The skirt was tight but not strained through my hips and thighs, but it was actually impossible to sit down in it! This really amused me because my hip measurement is actually smaller than my bust and my thighs are muscular from all my running, but I’ve never ever had a fitting problem in those areas before!
So I’m going to increase the waist by an inch, and the hips and thighs by 1.5 inches at the side seams to get some sitting ease, which means I really should have cut the skirt at least two sizes bigger than what was called for by the measurement chart!! The only other change I’m making is to lower the neckline by about an inch, as it sits right on my collarbone at the minute, and I’d rather like to expose mine a bit as it took me so much strength training to uncover them! So I’ll just need to lower the center front piece and the front facing to match, which shouldn’t take more than 10 seconds.
The dress looks very nice overall though, and has a gorgeous shape so I think it’s going to be drop-dead gorgeous by the time I’m finished with it, but I’m VERY GLAD I made a muslin for this! I do think that this would be quite unforgiving on a fuller figure, though – it really calls for a nipped-in waist to show off all the curved seams and careful darts, and I don’t think it’d be very flattering on anything but curvy (or Spanx-ed!) figures.
So the next step is to pretreat my wool crepe then cut out all 17 pieces! At least there’s not much interfacing to be done, and I found nearly all of the (many) notches to be optional…