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Member since 8/16/09
Posts: 8
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Posted on: 7/12/10 11:13 PM ET
I've been fitting a shirt pattern and can see the shoulder seamline in front. Clearly, the shirt isn't sitting on top of my shoulders, as it should. What seems to be working is the reverse of a forward shoulder adjustment. I added 1/4 inch to the fronts and removed the same amount from the backs.

I do have prominent muscles at the side of my neck/top of my shoulders. Is there a different alteration I should be making instead?

Why do I only read about forward shoulder adjustments? I can't be the only one who needs to do this.. can I?

Thanks for any thoughts you may have.
-Andi
  
Member since 1/9/05
Posts: 3570
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Posted on: 7/12/10 11:44 PM ET
No, you're not the only one! But my adjustment is only on the neck edge, not the shoulder edge. I always add 1.5cm to the front shoulder but I don't take off the back. I used to...then I finally worked out it wasn't working that way.

IMO, you're using the correct adjustment. :)
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Alison in suburbia - Sydney Australia
aka Bag Yoda
My sewing blog: http://nosilasews.blogspot.com/

My machines: Janome MC6700P, Janome MC6600P, Janome MC8000, Janome MC4900QC, Janome MC3500 (inherited from my mother), Husqvarna Rose, Janome My Excel 18W, Janome 534D & 2 x 634D overlockers, Janome Coverpro 1000CPX.
  
Member since 8/16/09
Posts: 8
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Posted on: 7/13/10 0:40 AM ET
In reply to goosegreen
Thanks so much for the vote of confidence. I may try it your way to see if it makes a difference. -Andi
  
Member since 5/19/06
Posts: 1771
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Posted on: 7/13/10 7:06 PM ET
If it looks good, there are no wrinkles, the garment feels comfortable, then it's the right thing to do.

Add fabric where you don't have enough, and take away where you have too much. Fitting is really pretty simple, even if it is not easy. If you were taking a flat piece of fabric and draping it on a dress form shaped exactly like your body, you could cut and pin the fabric however you needed in order to manipulate it to get the fit and drape you wanted. The alteration of a flat pattern is just adjusting the pattern made for the assumed standard figure to your own dimensions, rather than manipulating the fabric directly on your form.

Lots of buzz words are used for fitting issues that aren't particularly helpful except to help us all understand a bit what someone is talking about. Those terms seem pretty unflattering most of the time, like the person's body is deficient by being a bit smaller or larger or more curved or more angled than the standard used for drafting patterns. The problem is the use by the pattern companies of a standard figure that is a dress form in a size 10 by the charts, but who doesn't really exist (except in those very few people who can make a living being models for pattern makers to test their muslins before mass producing the tissue patterns).

Perhaps you don't have the reverse of a forward shoulder adjustment, rather you have a longer front chest and shoulder area than the pattern assumes for your back length. Or something like that. A forward shoulder adjustment means the neck part of the shoulder stays where it is drafted, and you are rotating the seam from that pivot point to the anatomical site of your shoulder point. If you are adding a straight 1/4 inch to the entire shoulder seam, shifting the entire seam to the back evenly, you are just making a length adjustment. If you are rotating the shoulder point back, pivoting from the neck part of the shoulder seam, then you are doing the reverse of a forward shoulder adjustment, which is probably called a backward shoulder adjustment but I've never seen it written up that way. I think Sandra Betzina's Fast Fit shows it as a drawing, even if it isn't named. The forward shoulder alteration drawing has the opposite adjustment as well as the named adjustment, IIRC.
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Fictionfan
  
Member since 8/16/09
Posts: 8
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Posted on: 7/13/10 8:11 PM ET
In reply to Fictionfan
Thank you, Fictionfan. Greatly appreciate your discussion on making it fit regardless of nomenclature or preconceived body notions. And for the bolt of lightening about the distinction between an even length adjustment and an actual rotation of the seam from a pivot point. -Andi
  
Member since 3/10/10
Posts: 52
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Posted on: 7/15/10 8:39 PM ET
i have that musculature, too. in the pattern fitting stuff, the standard-shoulder-too-forward can be fixed with an "erect posture" modification. (if you have prominent glutes, combine it w/ a swayback mod for good measure.
for my manly trapezius muscles, the alteration i make is to widen (but not necessarily deepened) the neckhole on the rear bodice, making the angle more acute; large deltoids = square shoulder alteration; and for prominent pectoralis major (and frequently backed up by large pectoralis minor), i have to alter the front bottom of the armhole to an L-shape for mobility (and if you have big boobs on top of that, add a mid-front-armscye dart)
  
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