Macaron madness. No, seriously. Madness.

I diligently worked on my Macaron bodice muslin last night. I'm not so hot at making 'muslins'. The closest I can come is to use fabric I don't OMG love but won't mind losing from my stash if it's a wadder. But I'm always thinking 'This one's going to work out so I should use normal fabric!' You know, because someone sedated me when I wasn't paying attention and performed extensive plastic surgery so my body is likely to fit into anything without a bajillion adjustments.

So here's the muslin sewn up exactly as I was told to do.

You know what? This picture doesn't actually make it look too bad. The reality is, if I was to say it made me look like a brick sh*thouse, that'd be unfair to brick sh*thouses. A huge pool of excess fabric under the bust, major arm gappage and a waistband that didn't hit at the smallest point. I went to bed (though not to sleep), in a major funk.

I wondered this morning if I could use any of the insight from Fit For Real People to try to salvage the bodice. First, I tried to address the arm gap. My doppelganger is wearing my bra, so I could feel that the curvy spotty piece was falling well below my cup line. This doesn't surprise me because I have a freakishly short torso and my breasts pretty much start at my collar-bones. By making a horizontal half inch tuck all the way across the upper chest, I lifted not only the spotty bit, but also the waistband, and it addressed some of the gap at the armhole. But not all of it, I also had to shave the side seam of just the front bodice at the armpit so that it pulled some of the excess taut.

And then the extra pooling under bust. There were fairly substantial underbust darts already, so I didn't want to increase their size (lest it get too pointy), and neither did I want to mess with the darts in the side seam. So I pinned a slightly shorter dart adjacent to each existing dart (placement closer to CF) and the excess under bust was much improved. To fit the slightly smaller underbust width of the bodice, I also had to tuck the waistband to fit.


After these adjustments were made, I didn't like the way the waistband was hanging (dipping down) so I tucked up the bodice at centre front so it sat more horizontally. I'm not sure if this is one change too much (or even two or three!)? Please tell me if you think so...

Spin doppelganger around and this is what's going on at the back:

Pure horror really, but actually not that hard to fix. I did the same half inch horizontal tuck across the width and it sits much better. Good thing I have puny pencil arms so I don't have to make the armholes bigger elsewhere.

So there you go then. An ambitious non-muslin that is now very much a muslin because it'll need to be completely re-cut and re-worked.

I have to say, I'm finding the process of sewing for myself very hard. If anything, it's actually hurting my body image. If I try something on in the shop and it doesn't fit, I don't buy it. But using my materials (therefore money) and my time to make something that doesn't fit is pretty soul destroying and it's making me dislike my pesky body shape even more. So, my sewing friends, does it get easier? If I keep calm and carry on will I start to know my body so well I can make adjustments before it even gets to muslin stage? Also, tales of how much it's worth it would be appreciated...