Pattern Master Boutique from Wild Ginger revisited

On Wednesday I took a day and spent it with two friends who have PMB version 5. Like me they bought it and like me thought that they now had a shortcut to fitting. Hasn't worked out quite that way. 


Of course owning expensive and powerful pattern design software does not remove a sewer's need for nearly every new pattern released - but the need for some TNT basics remains.


None of us have been perfectly happy with what we have been able to produce with this program. It all felt close enough however that we decided to explore the possibility of operator error and devote a day to measuring, sewing slopers, and critiquing each other. 


Only a sewer would appreciate how a day spent with three middle-aged women jumping in and out of trail garments and running around someone's basement in their underwear was a most excellent day.


What we all learned was this: another sewer is a much more accurate measurer than a husband who largely does what he has to do as fast as possible. So he can get back to whatever much more interesting activity he was engaged in before you interrupted him. You know like napping, looking at vintage motorcycles on eBay,  or standing in front of an open fridge door. Not hugely, world important, activities like trying to perfect a sloper pattern for a LBD despite the fact that your actual life doesn't require one except for funerals where, in this country at least, you are likely to attend with your coat left on anyway. 


OK. Where was I?


My sloper with pictures. 


I am going to alert Wild Ginger and see what I need to do to fix my problems, which are minor. Really with decent measuring help we all three found our products needed only minor tweeking, mainly I think because we all shortened our shoulder lengths.


Before you look these shots I can't help but give you a disclaimer.


We left the defaults on for our data inputer by mistake for all of us. She is 5'1" and I am 5'9". 


Therefore this is a mini skirt version. I don't want you to think I am actually delusional enough to wear my skirts this short, and I would have to raise my bust point too. Also the program can't see, so there are things like lowering the back darts for caboose accommodation that even I can see myself I need to do and we pinned out.


And finally this is a fitting garment - a sloper - and not a real dress pattern. I would be nuts to wear anything this form fitting and as revealing of my dumpy self.


I mean can you imagine wearing a dress made out of this? A person might as well forget getting taken out for anniversary dinners if she dressed like this. Forever.


This is why there is such a thing as Design Ease, the stuff that gets added to patterns along with that thing called style so you don't look like that aunt you told yourself when you were fifteen you would never end up dressing like when you were that old - you know really old like 45. 


OK my sloper:

A garment suitable for wiping down the tables after a church supper

A dress that Tells the Truth

The Truth with back darts lowered

Don't scare the children Babs.
 Note mysterious need to move shoulder seams back as marked. Also little looseness in centre front. We tried to tell ourselves this could be eased in. I hope so because having a single centre front dart will be uncool even in the kitchen in the church basement.

What do you think?

I will let you know what the experts at Wild Ginger advise, but to tell you the truth this is pretty good progress, and the conversation during our fitting day, largely off topic, was fabulous.