Hello readers!
Last month, I wrote a post talking about how to raise or lower the bust darts of a pattern (see Tutorial: Lowering (or raising) a bust dart). This month, we’re going to learn how to apply the same concept to a princess seamed bodice. This technique can be applied to both armscye and shoulder princess seamed pattern pieces.
Note that if you need to raise the bust fullness, you’ll follow the exact same procedure, but simply raise the cutout boxes instead of lowering them.
Quick recap
If you’ll recall, most commercial patterns are drafted for a “perky” B-cup sized bust. As your bust size increases, you not only will likely need to make a Full Bust Adjustment (FBA) to your pattern tissue, you may very likely need to lower the bust point, since larger breasts tend to be heavier and therefore have lower bust points.
Diagnosing the issue
It’s a little easier to tell that you need the bust fullness lowered on a princess seamed garment (IMO) than on a darted garment. With darts, you simply get darts pointing somewhere other than the apex. On looser fitting garments, dart placement can shift around a little bit, making the best location sometimes a little bit of a judgment call. With princess seams, however, you’ll see a soft “bubble” of fabric above your bust, which simply means that the fullest part of the bust for this particular pattern started higher up on the bodice than where the actual fullest part of your bust is on your body.
Before you start
Just like determining how much to lower a set of bust darts, you’ll need to make a muslin or tissue fit your pattern to determine how much to lower your princess seam fullness. See Tutorial: Lowering (or raising) a bust dart for instructions on how to do this. Use the same determination technique for princess seams as for bust darts.
Order of operations: Lowering fullness
One important difference to point out between lowering bust darts and lowering princess seam fullness has to do with when in your sequence of pattern alterations to perform the lowering step.
- With bust darts, you should generally lower the darts AFTER you perform an FBA (if needed). This is because the nature of a darted FBA will automatically lower the darts some.
- With princess seams, lower the bust fullness BEFORE you perform the FBA. Your FBA will add length over the bust but not actually lower the fullness itself.
Lowering the fullness of the princess seams
The actual technique for lowering princess seam fullness is nearly identical to lowering bust darts even though your pattern pieces look very different. Additionally, you’ll be working with two different pattern pieces instead of just one.
Princess seamed bodice pattern pieces: Side panel and center front panel
For this tutorial, I’m using an armscye princess seam bodice. You can use the same technique for shoulder princess seams.
To lower the fullness on a princess seamed bodice:
- On the side panel, draw a box around the fullest part of the bust on the pattern piece. This area is usually indicated by an upper and a lower notch.
Draw a box around the fullest part of the bust.
- With scissors, cut out the box.
- Directly slide the box down the amount that you need to lower the bust fullness. Fill in the resulting gap with paper behind your pattern pieces, and tape everything into place.
Slide the box down and tape into place.
- True up the seamlines.
True up the seam differences.
When you do this, make sure that you shave off the bit that’s ABOVE the taped-in gap that you just created. (If you were to extend that part of the seamline to the lower portion instead of shaving off the top bit, you’d get a weird bump above your bust. Ask me how I know.)
- Trim the excess.
Trim the excess
The side panel is now finished. Now you’ll need to lower the fullness on the center panel of the bodice.
- Like you did with the side panel, draw a box around the two notches noting the fullest part of the bust.
Draw a box around the two notches indicating the fullest part of the bust.
- Cut out the box and slide it down the amount that you’re lowering the bust fullness.
Cut out the box and slide it down.
- True up the seam.
True up the seam.
- Trim the excess.
Trim the excess
That’s it! You’ve now lowered the bust fullness on both the side and center panels of your princess seamed bodice.
Altered side and front panel pieces
If you need to perform an FBA, you can do that next. See Princess Seams: An FBA for Large Busts.
Thanks Michelle. This is a really helpful post. Your tip about how to true up the area above the bust fullness explains so much about my challenges trying to adust the Blank Slate Novelista pattern – my first foray into princess seams. I can go back and have another go at that now. I’ve just followed your instructions on McCalls 6898 tonight (the pattern which is really similar to the Deer & Doe Bruyere).
This is a great post. , thank you for sharing , very helpful tips for diagnosis !
Regarding FBA , I would suggest smoothing the curve out on the side panel , this reduces the length of the seam so you would need to reduce length of central panel between notches to match .
Yes, that will do it. The other thing is that when you do your FBA, you’ll want that vertical slice to be as close to the SA as possible–that will help control the length/curve when you rotate the side dart into that seam. I hope that makes sense. And if it doesn’t, this is a topic that I’m considering doing a “troubleshooting” post on in the future.
Thank you , I think it would be really useful for those of us less curvy .
Thank you gals for making adjustments so easy – I’ve been fitting challenged all my life (40+ years of sewing) and finally “get it” thanks to your posts.
You make this look so easy! I have a blouse with princess seams that I’ve been hesitant to sew up because I had no idea at all how to adjust the shaping. Thanks so much for your tutorial, I’ll have to bite the bullet and make myself up a muslin now that the adjustment isn’t so scary!!
Thank you Michelle! This is brilliant and something I really need to know since my bust is often about an inch lower than the pattern 🙂
Can I make the box and push it in for a flat bust? Seems I would need to get rid of the bump out on the side? Asking this because I have many blouses that need alteration to accommodate my double mastectomy. Maybe the process is entirely different for sba. Thank you
Barbara, you’d want to do an SBA for a mastectomy. You need to decrease the bust size for the pattern. The bust point is separate from that. You may or may not need to move the bust point–a muslin would be the best way to find that out.
Thank you. I became a wonderful pattern adjuster for a very large and low breasts. There is no apex and I need no darts or contouring now. My chest has less form than a man. Perhaps more like an adolescent boy who would not have any chest muscle development. I still would like to adjust the princess seam so it would fit a no bust. I do love your box method and I thank you for sharing it.