What I learned making up the muslin

Before I traced the pattern I read every review for this pattern over at Patternreview. One review mentioned no problems, others problems matching up the shoulder seam and notches on the sleeve and problems with the length of the sleeve. Thinking about it all I traced for my size, a combination of 10 and 14 and cut it the muslin. I did add to the back waist length, I figure I could always pinch it out if I didn't need it.

Okay, first the armscye and sleeve notches did not match up because when trying to pin the side seam from the hem up to the sleeve the underarm seam did not come together. On the other reviewers advice I placed the top of the sleeve cap notch 1.5 inches away from the shoulder seam towards the back;

this made the underarm seam match up perfectly, yay!

and also the notch on the back side of the sleeve also matched the notch on the back of the bodice.

However the sleeve seam now sewed up short on the back side.

At this point before trying to fix up the sleeve on my own I wrote to the Hot Patterns team, and about 10 minutes later I was in conversation to try to resolve my problem. After sending them pictures they told me to ease in the underarm seam and see what happened. I did and all is well.

A few important things to note about this design:

- the shoulder seam is not at the top of the shoulder but down to the front by 1.5 inches, you realize this once you try the muslin on, and that is why the top of the cap needs to be towards the back from this "shoulder" seam

-the easing of the sleeve seam as directed by Trudy (from Hot Patterns) shapes the sleeve to give it the natural shape of the relaxed arm/semi-bent elbow. Maybe a more experienced seamstress would have realized that is what needed to be done, I just didn't see it.

- the ease of the sleeve around the forearm is minimal, I don't know if you can tell but my left arm has the sleeve that I added 1 inch to.




Conclusion:

I like this style on me, I will proceed to the fashion fabric next!!