After having bad results with making garments without checking the fit with a toile I’ve started to make at least a wearable toile to make sure the fit is right for me before making the actual garment. So, before I made my wrap top for my April project for Minerva Blogger Network, I made a wearable toile using a shirting fabric a lovely collegaue from work gave me to check the fit.
For the toile I cut a size 12 and shortened the bodice by 2.5 cm, which is a normal adjustment I make for the Simplicity patterns. I made view D with the bottom of View A. Making the blouse was quite quick.
The finsihed toile as fairly well fitting. However, the dart was way to high on me. It seems that for this particular pattern shortening the bodice was not a good thing to do as it also raised the waist above my waist.
I also found that the longer bottom does not really look as nice as I thought and I the slit in the sleeve is not as effective as I would have thought. It’s more annoying than pretty.
As a result, in my finished garment I added back to the lenght the 2.5 cm I took out for this wearable toile, I uised the shorter skirt/bottom as in sugested for view D and sewed up the sleeve seam all the way down and treating is as a normal sleeve.
If you’d like to see how my actual garment looks like please check out my post about it here.
I have the feeling with this one, I’ll recycle the fabric and use it in some of my smaller projects as that dart point will annoy me and I will not enjoy wearing it at all. I am so glad that I made a wearable toile first.
Sewing Adventures In The Attick 
Hi I’m a new stitchling and I’m currently making this pattern. I’m struggling with the neck/neck facing specifically. I’m not sure how to make it and the pieces ive cut for the facing/collar are too short it seems. Do you have any advice please, as I’m not very e experienced and not made a collar like this one yet. Many thanks in advance for your help. Olivia 😊
Hi Olivia, this pattern is not the best one I’ve worked with. Have you checked the facing paper pattern piece with the actual fabric piece? I do not remember one of the pieces being smaller. Is it possible that the neckline on your garment stretched out of shape? To avoid that, one trick is to stay-stitch inside the seam allowance on the neckline before starting construction. Hope this helps.
Hi just wondering if you solved this problem with the neck? I am having the exact same problem. I stay stitched, I check the pieces, and the neck facing is just too short.
I’ve taken the pattern pieces out. The facing pieces are shorter. I traced them again but matching them bodice piece . I traced most of the facing but instead of drawing the bit at the waist where it ends, I overlapped the front piece with the facing and drew it longer so that they are the same at the bottom. (I forgot that I did that as I adjusted the bodice on my first try and assumed I didn’t change it back) hope that this answers your question