A Close-Fitting Sloper

[jruley]

Didn't Jim say the floor is uneven?

Not where he's standing now - which is why the change was made.

[jruley]

Look at side view and look at waist line. See it rises in front and you see it clearly in the front pic. Your next alterations is the balance.
After this you will add fabric in front and take away in back.

Yes, I see what you're saying.  But how much to add and where?

Should I remove the sleeves, then pass the back down on the front until the lines are horizontal?

[jruley]

Don't get ahead of yourself by doing too many things at once.

Don't worry.  After the jacket experience, I have resolved not to make any changes I don't fully understand.

Redraft the neck using an alternative formula. 1/6 chest is really more appropriate for jackets. So you could try 1/5 of you neck measurement instead.

So, how to judge what's really right?  Should the ends of the seam just touch my neck?  Should I improvise some kind of caliper and find my actual neck width?

So do you have an across back measurement of your body? Compare that number to what the draft gives you using their formula. Generally you will want half your measured cross back plus some ease. Since this is a close fitting shirt block, then half cross back plus maybe one inch? No more.

My wife measured my back interscye distance as 16" - half is 8".  The distance in the draft is 1/6 chest + 1-1/2".  With my 40" chest this works out to 8.17, or a little more than 8-1/8".  Fitting shows this is already too wide, so I don't think I want to add ease.

[jruley]

For what it's worth, and to get all the good out of the old mockup before it is redrafted, I decided to try adjusting the balance by passing the front up on the back at the side seams.

My wife measured the vertical distance to the floor at the waist seam CF and CB.  The difference was about 3/4", so I moved the front up by that amount.  When looking at the pictures keep in mind that I didn't re-mark the waist lines, so the front is now 3/4" higher than the back.

Here are the results.  The scye fronts are bulging, but I don't know if that is from too much material or because the shape is now wrong since the bottom of front scye has been raised.

This is pinned in place, so if anyone wants to see a different adjustment just let me know.

[TTailor]

My wife measured my back interscye distance as 16" - half is 8".  The distance in the draft is 1/6 chest + 1-1/2".  With my 40" chest this works out to 8.17, or a little more than 8-1/8".  Fitting shows this is already too wide, so I don't think I want to add ease.

Well what I mean is that there is always ease in a shirt back, it is never just your body measurement.
So your base body measurement plus ease. Usually the amount of ease depends on how close fitting the shirt is overall. This draft has 2" ease on the half, so think about where they are distributing the ease.

Just to confirm where that measurement is taken, it is mid upper back, from where the arm joins the torso to the other side in the same place.

Since by the draft calculations you end up with a back width that is a bit too wide at 8 1/8" it goes to reason that your body measurement cross back  of 16" or 8" on the half is incorrect.
Or, the chest measurement itself is incorrect(too small) but lets assume the chest measurement is right.

How to judge if the neckline is correct? Well, that is hard to describe. Once you sew a collar on, it becomes more obvious. Lets say that yes, the finished seam line should touch your neck at the sides and sit higher in the front, than where it is now. Think about the position of a dress  shirt collar, how and where it sits on your neck.

I think it will improve things by using a different formula for the neck.

[TTailor]

Re: adjusting the balance photos, no that didn't improve things. Go back to what you had.

Redraft, incorporate the new neck calculations, the shoulder dart/lengthening over the blade that improved the back, then do the slash across the front, add the wedge, and redraw the CF as described.

[jruley]

OK, just to be clear about the next steps:

- Everyone agrees to keep the shoulder dart/blade length adjustment.

- Everyone agrees a smaller neck hole is needed.

- Peterle thinks I should shift the armhole backward to increase the width in front and reduce it in back.  Terri seems to agree with the narrower back but hasn't mentioned the front.

Most troubling to me:

- Terri believes I should add a wedge to the front and add length below the chest line.  Posaune said (post #22) I need a balance adjustment, adding material in front and taking away in the back.  When I tried to test this (last set of pictures), Terri saw no improvement.  However, posaune didn't give specific instructions, so it's possible what I did wasn't what was intended.

I would like to make sure posaune and Terri are in agreement before I do the redraft.

Thanks,

Jim

[Greger]

Believe, without going back to look, Posaune said you have short front balance. Now, it is shorter.

Around the chest you are short on width on the front and extra wide on back. On the c&t site or Canadian Jeff site the same draft showing how to change a pattern for drape which would give you a little more room in the chest. Believe Peterle was describing this method.

Terri's front cut is for the belly that sits out further than the chest.

Since you have a back seam, and the neck hole is to wide, this seam can be used to narrow the back width and neck hole. After you do that, finding the best widths, you go back to the drawing board and redraw according to the change that fits.

The backs are probably reusable with the changes. But you will need new fronts.

What do you have, an engineering degree? They taught you how to think about engineering metals, wood, plastics, concrete and other stuff. But they didn't teach you about engineering clothes. Working with cloth is very different than what your engineering lessons taught. Until you know a lot more about working with cloth and fittings you need to throw out your engineering lessons here. Those lessons are messing you up. They laid out principles for a different type of engineering. And they are going to trip/mess you up, until you throw them out. Other engineers came to realize this is a different ball game that requires a different way of thinking. That is when they started to improve.

[posaune]

Jim,
do what Terri says. She has so much more experience as I.
It is no witch craft. Take a ruler draft a straight line from waist line point to point at side seams on your pic and see how much the waistline goes up in CF. Estimate the distance. (I let the customer take a sheet of paper on his hand, which measurements I knew so it is realtivily easy.)
Clipp your sloper and spread a wedge . sew some fabric in at lower side of the wegde. And begin to pin the upper side with 1.5 cm Distance  to let it down. Do a pic and controll again the waist line (Could be better (darker marekd). As you see clearly in the last pic the waist at front goes more up than in the pics before. (You should do the 3/4 " to let the front go down not go up)

Assume: You have a bust circ measurement 106 cm. Now take the half: 53 cm, this will be used for the draft. In this half included is the bust half the (whole) armhole width and the back half. Let's assume it is 21 + 12 + 20 (just to say anything number not your measurement)
So if the back is to wide  (20) and you take 18 instead you have taken away 2 cm from the back . But your circ is 53 as before it is a body measurement and has not changed. You add the 2 cm into front (or if you have thick arms - in the armhole  + front).  And voila you have 53 again.  (23 +12+18)
And you have moved the armhole more into back.
have to run
posaune

[TTailor]

Sorry greger, i know that one can take in the back as you describe but in this situation we have been avoiding that so that modifying the drafting itself can be understood.
Don't do that Jim.

OK, just to be clear about the next steps:

- Everyone agrees to keep the shoulder dart/blade length adjustment.

yes

Everyone agrees a smaller neck hole is needed.

Yes

Peterle thinks I should shift the armhole backward to increase the width in front and reduce it in back.  Terri seems to agree with the narrower back but hasn't mentioned the front.

Yes I assumed that was understood, and that is what will happen if you reduce the back width, keep the space for the armhole the same, then the fronts width gains what you took from the back, as Posaune describes.

Most troubling to me:

- Terri believes I should add a wedge to the front and add length below the chest line.  Posaune said (post #22) I need a balance adjustment, adding material in front and taking away in the back.  When I tried to test this (last set of pictures), Terri saw no improvement.  However, posaune didn't give specific instructions, so it's possible what I did wasn't what was intended.

I would like to make sure posaune and Terri are in agreement before I do the redraft.

I think that sometimes people read things about fitting such as passing up the back or front, but the full implications of doing that are not understood, and in this case, it is not intended.

You need to add a wedge. You can see the effects in the mock up you have right now by doing as posaune says. Cut acoss from cf to armhole. Stitch in a piece of fabric behind, open a wedge and stitch the other side of the wedge to it. see what happens. This is not the complete alteration, as on paper you need to correct the front line too.

I agree with Posaune, so go ahead.

[peterle]

To make the difference clear:
By passing up the front in the side seam you lengthend the fronts equally across the hole chest.
But your body just needs more length over the middle of the fronts but no additional length at the armholes. (This is why passing up didn´t succeed).

Inserting a wedge instead of a strip accomplishes the task to lengthen the front parts at the center and keeping them short at the armhole.

[jruley]

What do you have, an engineering degree? They taught you how to think about engineering metals, wood, plastics, concrete and other stuff. But they didn't teach you about engineering clothes. Working with cloth is very different than what your engineering lessons taught. Until you know a lot more about working with cloth and fittings you need to throw out your engineering lessons here. Those lessons are messing you up. They laid out principles for a different type of engineering. And they are going to trip/mess you up, until you throw them out. Other engineers came to realize this is a different ball game that requires a different way of thinking. That is when they started to improve.

I probably shouldn't take the bait, but -- please remind me where I mentioned engineering anywhere in this thread?

Not only an engineering degree, but I also worked as a technical draftsman during my undergraduate college days.  One of the things I studied in high school drafting class was sheet metal development, turning complex shapes into flat patterns for things like air ducts.  This was good preparation for this kind of work and I'd be asking a lot more questions without it.

The main relevance of my engineering training here is thinking logically and breaking complex problems down into a series of small steps.  I have no intention of changing that.

Those who haven't worked in my field have no idea of the role played by art, imagination, intuition, and experience.  They don't even know how much they don't know.  We even have a term for that - it's an "unknown unknown".

Now please:  Let's worry about fixing the sloper, and do our navel-gazing somewhere else!

Thanks everyone for reviewing the directions, which are clear to me now.

[Schneiderfrei]

That is a very cool description peterle, I like it very much.

Jruley, have a look at http://movsd.com/BespokeCutter/index.php?topic=61.0

That will give an idea of other ways of finding balance in a shirt.  I expect there even more ways than those.

G

[jruley]

Jruley, have a look at http://movsd.com/BespokeCutter/index.php?topic=61.0

That will give an idea of other ways of finding balance in a shirt.  I expect there even more ways than those.

G

Thanks for sharing that thread.  I have made balance corrections to a couple of shirts in the past.  These involved adding length all the way across the back, or passing the whole back up to get the shirt resting comfortably around the neck.  So I assumed this is what posaune meant by "balance"; but as you say there are many ways to achieve it.  Evidently they are not all correct, you need to pick the best one for your particular case.

I think this diagram is closest to what Terri is asking me to do (except the wedge goes at the chest line, at bottom of scye):



Which brings up something she didn't address.  There is going to be a lot more width on the front hemline.  The diagram shows adjusting the side seam to account for this, but it's not clear how much.

I expect the smart thing for now is to treat this as extra "inlay" and find the right amount to reduce it in the fitting.

[jruley]

Concerning the drop shoulder. I´m not 100%sure about it. In the new back pic your shoulders are equally in height. Not so in the front pic. Is it possible your spine isn´t bent like a shallow C but like a shallow S? In other words both of your shoulders are shifted to the left? When I draw a vertical line through the shoulder seam ends on your pics (perpendicular to the cabinets edge on the first back pic), the left line doesn´t touch the hip at all , the right line cuts the hip. This would mean the sacrum and the 7th vertebra don´t line up vertically. This "off center" situation has to be dealt with in the pattern.

My trainer, who is a licensed physical therapist, traced my spine curve this morning.  He confirms I have a symptoms of a mild case of scoliosis, i.e. the spine is bent like the letter C.  He thinks this is probably why I look like I'm dropping the right shoulder.

He also recommended I get an X-ray to determine the exact magnitude and see if physical therapy was in order .  But I don't think we should wait for that before fixing the pattern.