Thoughts on The Fitting Muslin

This is the process I go through to create a fitting muslin. It's not quick and dirty, but it will yield a well fitting garment. It's not a process I go through for every garment I make either—just so that you know that I'm not completely crazy.

In a post to follow soon, I plan to document step-by-step the muslin process that I go through to fit a coat or jacket. I'll illustrate this post with photos. If you're feeling like "it's the first of June and I'm ready to go", and you don't need illustrated steps, then here are the steps involved:

1. Measure your pattern tissue. If you're using an American pattern you'll need to first draw the seam allowances on the pattern tissue, so that you measure only the actual garment pieces, not the seam allowances. If you're using Burda or Marfy or Patrones, you're in luck because these patterns don't include preset seam allowances.

2. Determine if you need to make pattern alterations. You'll need to make the same alterations you normally do. For example, if you typically do an FBA, adjust for length or a sway back, etc., you'll need to do that here too.

3. Determine how you want your coat to fit. Snug? Loose? This is a personal choice. Wearing ease for a fitted coat will be minimum of 4" in the bust (circumference), minimum of 2" at the waist, and 5"-6" at the hip. Minimum ease for the sleeve, at the bicep is also 4". If you're planning to wear your coat over a suit everyday to work, plan on 6" at the bust, 4-5" at the waist, and 6-8" at the hip. These are minimums for wearing ease, and do not account for style/design ease. Those of you making full skirted coats such as Vogue 8346 may have 4" ease at the bustline and 10" or more at the hip. Be sure to check lengths too—back neck length, sleeve length, overall length.

Once you've altered your pattern in the flat tissue stage then you're going to want to lay it out on your muslin, leaving room for 1" seam allowances on all your vertical seams, and 1.5 to 2" seam allowances at the shoulder. I would add 1" seam allowances on the sleeves also.

You'll be transferring to the muslin every stitching line, every mark, every match point on your pattern, as well as the grain line for every piece. Draw your horizontal lines on your pattern tissue for your waist and hip lines, across all pieces, then transfer those lines to your muslin also. I use a tracing wheel and large sheets of wax tracing paper (link in a previous post on sources) to do this. You'll also want to cut out your collar, pocket welts, and any other relevant pieces.

After you've got your garment fitting properly you can add the collar and the welts or patch pockets and evaluate them for proportion to your body, placement, etc.

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When the muslin is first put together it will look something like this:

(My sister probably wouldn't appreciate being used as a model here, but this is a closed blog, and these pics have appeared before. This picture was taken during a long-distance fitting session. I was drawing on the pics and sending them back to her so that the next correction could be made. This was early on in the process of making a fitted jacket—the princess seam still needed to be moved, the shoulder extended too far out and also needed moving forward—but it was a process.)

You can see the 1" seam allowances. You can also see that I not only traced the stitching lines and markings onto the muslin, but where I needed them to show on both the right side and the wrong side I stitched my lines on the muslin.

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To show you where we're eventually going with this:


Above is a muslin that I fit for myself. After the fitting I cut the muslin apart on the altered stitching lines, and am using that as the pattern piece to lay out and cut this houndstooth fabric. You'll notice the original pattern stitching lines that I marked (what you're looking at here is the back). I needed to let out a bit in the hip and take in a bit in the waist. At the hemline I ended up sewing on another piece of muslin because I didn't like the length on the original pattern. The red horizontal line is just added fabric.

In this photo above, the muslin is ready for thread tracing on the seam lines, and then cutting apart, adding seam allowances.

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To many of you, this is old hat. But if this looks intimidating to you, don't worry. I will be breaking it down into steps with photographs so that you can make your own muslin. NancyK, I'll also illustrate changing your princess seamline then.

And I'll take pics on the process of making a 2-piece sleeve from a one piece sleeve pattern.

Also in June we'll be trueing up the grainlines in all fabrics and preshrinking.

Making up the muslin and prepping fabric is all that's on the table here for the whole month of June, so you've got plenty of time to sew fun things to wear now and to go play and work and everything else you do.