"Chanel-Inspired" French Cardigan Jacket: Part 6

I may have mentioned this earlier, but I started to quilt my french jacket pieces over a year ago when I first started the project. I tested out the quilting on some pieces of scrap fabric slightly smaller than a sheet of paper and didn’t use an obsessive amount of pins, just enough scattered around so that the silk and boucle wouldn’t shift or slide much. The walking foot do the work, and went slowly starting from the same end for each row. The results looked good so I went ahead and quilted all but the center front panels.

Then I put the jacket aside for the winter, spring, summer, fall (took a jacket making class) and last winter when I made my wedding dress.  That brings me (more or less) to the present and despite being in 2 classes this semester I have finally come back to the project and made several new muslins to check and refine the fit. I decided to go up one jacket size and worked on same fit issues that I had previously.

Muslin #1  - front not hanging straight

Muslin #2 - Neckline also overlaps at front

I don't have any pictures of the current V7975 muslins (#3, #4) but the problem is pretty much the same, the front is swinging away at the hem and the neckline overlaps at the top. The difference is that I now have a little bit more knowledge about jacket fitting. The first place one should address when dealing with this sort of fit problem is the shoulder seam. In order to get the front to hang straight (grain-lines are important in a muslin fitting!) one must correct the placement of the shoulder seam. In the case of this pattern, my shoulder seams are too far forward at the neck which is causing the problems.

To correct the problem on the new muslins (I did this for all three that I made) I only used pins at the seams (yes, I have tons of scratches on my arms... don't say I didn't warn you) and I was able to re pin the shoulder seams in increments until I was satisfied with the placement of the shoulder seam and the grain-line on the front of the jacket. It turned out that the front pieces were fine, but the back pieces were too long/high and the back neck of the muslin was creeping up my neck.

evidence of my erect back (muslin #1)

Now, I have a rather pronounced front (ahem) and a rather straight, erect back. I often have wrinkles across my back at the bra line because my front is longer than my back thanks to my assets. I have done some research and know that an "erect" back alteration is quite similar to a sway back alteration.
(My fix usually involves picking up the back about/at least a 1/2".  By "pick-up" I mean to actually lower the back neck and shoulders. (note: Pattern, Scissors, Cloth has a great tutorial) In the case of this jacket I could easily see that the same alteration would correct the back neck and shoulder seam line.

Muslin #3 - back correction

Further muslin refinements included a front FBA by letting out the front princess seams and replacing the bust curve. I also tried an even larger muslin (20) but the fit in the armholes and across back was too big so I went back to the size 18. The muslin adjustments were transferred back to my paper pattern and then I re-thread traced my pattern onto the already quilted pattern pieces. Thank Susan for those extra large seam margins! The difference was no more than 1/2" total so it should work out fine. For the moment I am leaving the original basting threads in.

The current state of the jacekt

I have also begun to machine baste the pieces together and I'm looking forward to matching and cutting out the sleeve pieces.