Modifying a neckline

Just real quick items here for now... eventually may get illustrations.

How you would modify a square neckline to a "V" neckline?

A number of the patterns we are suggesting have a square neck... here are some quick steps to help you modify the patterns.

Tape your two front pieces together just to the neckline (that's piece 1 & 2) - be careful because you're going to want to untape them for use! And overlap the seam allowances for this. Don't worry that they won't tape around the bust curve you don't need to worry about it that far.

Now very lightly with a pencil (but make sure you can see it), draw a straight line that runs from the shoulder of piece 2 to the midline of piece 1. You may need to tape a piece of paper behind both pieces to fill in the gap from the square to the V.

Once you've got this, carefully separate piece 1 & 2 (leave any pieces of filler paper attached to their respective pieces!). this is your new pattern. REMEMBER, you just drew the sewing line, NOT the cutting line! You may want to leave a little bit of excess paper to draw on your seam allowance cutting line.

Oh, about the overlapped seam allowances: when you lay it out to cut the fabric, just extend your revised cutting lines to follow whatever the shape for the seam allowance was - you just didn't want it to mess up the lay of the finished V when you drew it.

Not really difficult to do. Just pieces and a little fussy.  Oh, and you'll of course need to make the same changes to any neckline facings they call for.

After you make these change, cut a muslin out (of at least the bodice area).  You want to check and make sure that the neck does not gap out.  If it does, take in a little dart on your fabric pieces.  It shouldn't be an adjustment of more than a fraction of an inch, but will let  the neckline sit cleaner.  Flatten that our, and try that as your new fabric piece.  Just fiddle with

==Judy



This page was last updated 04/22/08