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armscye question

blessedtosew | Posted in Fitting on

I am new here and am so happy to have found this message board.  I have been sewing for about 9 years and have yet to successfully make a jacket.  My problem is always the armscye.  The armhole is just too big even though the rest of the jacket fits with no alteration.    I am not sure what to do to fix it.  I have considered cutting out a smaller size on the armhole.  Any jacket I make always hangs down too low under the arm and the last one I made not only did that, but was just too big all around the shoulder and underarm area, even though it fit perfectly everywhere else.  Can anyone help me?  A friend suggested I take a deeper seam at the shoulder seam.  I can see how that will  make it not too long underarm, but I am not sure what to do about it being just too big overall in the shoulder and underarm area?  Please help.  Thanks

Replies

  1. scrubble4 | | #1

    Hi blessedtosew:  Welcome!  You will love this site and learn tons.  There are some very wise sewers here who will always take the time to help the rest of us.  We are so fortunate.  I have one site, from right here on Threads that may begin to help you answer your question:

    http://www.taunton.com/threads/pages/t00228.asp

    Also Fashion Incubator is another great internet site which has very helpful information on fitting sleeves and bodices.  I am including a pathway for understanding sleeve ease. 

    http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/sleeve_cap_ease_is_bogus_pt2.html

    Scrubble4

  2. Beth | | #2

    Good morning blessed.
    From your post, I'm not sure why your jacket armscye doesn't fit. If you have a jacket with a good fit in this area, why not compare the two? Taking a photo of yourself in the two jackets can help with indentifying what is behind your problem.

    Determining how your figure varies from the pattern company model is not easy. Once you work that out, there is plenty of information about how to adjust the pattern.

    You can do this.
    Beth

  3. Fruzzle | | #3

    I have the opposite problem -- my armscyes are always to small, even if everything else fits. I slide the bottom of the armscye down the pattern, without moving anything else, and I think you could probably do the reverse.

    It's a "box slide" method, where you cut a box out of the pattern and then slide it up or down. To draw the box, draw one line perpendicular to the grainline at the armscye notches. Draw another line, perpendicular to the grainline, on the side seam about a half inch below the armscye. Connect these two lines with a line *parallel* to the grainline, a couple of inches in from the cutting line (you don't have to be particularly exact).

    You should now have a square shape with one curved edge. Cut out the square, slide it up the pattern (by however much you want the armscye to move up -- for the sake of illustration, let's say a half inch), fill in the gap with tissue, and true the seams. Do this to the front and the back of the pattern. (I practiced this by sketching my pattern shape on a blank piece of copy paper and sliding things around until I figured out how it worked.)

    You also have to adjust the sleeve so it fits in the new armscye. Draw a line from the notches on the front to the notches on the back. Shorten the pattern at this point by the same distance that you shortened the front & back (e.g. a half inch).

    This should work if your shoulders are short in height; if you have narrow shoulders, you might have to make a different adjustment.

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