The Curvy Sewing Collective is delighted to welcome Lindsie to the blog today. You may know her from SewBusty on Facebook, Instagram and the new SewBusty blog. Enjoy!
I’m sure I’m not alone in hating pattern alterations. I loathe them. Despise them.
When I sit down to make a project, I don’t want to spend hours doing a full bust adjustment, grading between my waist and mini-booty, and sometimes throwing in a full bicep adjustment. It’s exhausting.
But, like most people, my body isn’t standard sized. Most notably, I have giant boobs for my frame. I wore an E cup bra by the 6th grade, and they’ve only gotten bigger (to a J cup) since.
I wanted a shortcut to well-fitting garments. Enter the sloper.
What’s a sloper? It’s basically a pattern of a pattern. It’s a two-dimensional guide to your body, which you can then alter by changing seamlines, adding ease, or moving darts to create basically any design you want.
That said, just like with patterns, sloper drafting methods have been developed by the fashion industry, and it’s no secret that the fashion industry hasn’t been exceedingly concerned with drafting for non-”standard” bodies. So in the same way that patterns are often designed for our B cup friends, drafting methods often also assume a B cup. And even the drafting methods that do take larger busts into account generally cut off at a D. (And we’re talking a bra D; a 4” difference between full bust and underbust.)
So I decided to do an experiment. I decided to draft a bodice sloper not one, not two, not three, but FOUR different ways in order to find the best sloper drafting method for big busts.
To the extent possible, I used the same measurements for all of these drafts.
The Suzy Furrer Method
The first drafting method I tried was the Suzy Furrer method, following Suzy’s Craftsy class: Patternmaking Basics: The Bodice Sloper.
The Furrer Method is based on a set of 15 measurements.
The first hurdle I encountered in drafting with the Furrer method was determining my cup size. Notably, Furrer does not use the high bust measurement but instead bases cup size off of the difference between the full bust and the underbust +4 or +5. For me, this meant an F garment cup – a 6” difference between the full bust and underbust +4.
Unfortunately, Furrer’s instructions for darts only go up to a D cup – a 4” difference between these two measures. She suggests those with busts bigger than a D stick with the D darts … so that’s what I did.
And it all seemed to be going well. I drew my lines, curved around that French curve, and labeled my heart out.
Until I got to the armscye. Literally one of the last steps of making the sloper is drawing the connection between the underarm seam and the shoulder seam. At this point, I knew that my armscye needed to be at least 8.25” to get around my shoulder. But my side seam and shoulder seam were just. too. close. Unless I made the curve totally crazy, the distance between these two points was, at most, 6.25”.
Unfortunately, it seems Furrer is no longer answering questions on the Craftsy forum, so scrolling through the questions in the Q&A section, I found a lot of busty people with the same armscye problem but no solution.
This is all to say that I didn’t finish the Suzy Furrer draft, as it seemed at this point that the draft was out of the running for the most boob-friendly.
The Cal Pat Method
The next method I decided to try was the Cal Patch Method, based on her CreativeBug course: Pattern Making: Make a Master Dress Pattern.
The Cal Patch method was by far the easiest of the drafts. Cal really tried to make her class accessible for all levels and it really shows. If you’re looking for an easy introduction to drafting, this is it.
The big caveat, though, is that Cal’s method doesn’t take high bust into account, and the result is unfortunate. As you see, I have the dreaded armpit wings of doom – the classic sign that one needs to size down and do a full bust adjustment.
If I were to do the Cal Patch method again, I’d make it based on my high bust measurement, and then do a full bust adjustment to alter it to my full bust. Unfortunately, this doesn’t make this drafting method very boob-friendly.
I do want to note that the Cal Patch method fit the best in waist, hips, and booty.
The Natalie Bray Method
Per a suggestion from the Curvy Sewing Collective Facebook group, I decided to next try the Natalie Bray method. There’s no fancy Craftsy or CreativeBug class for this, but Natalie Bray’s book is free on Z Library and this YouTube video from Pattern Making with Made is excellent.
Natalie Bray’s method uses only 6 measurements, and a series of standard measurements to connect the dots.
The Bray method doesn’t use a high bust measurement, either, and I was worried. But what it does use is a back width measurement, and I think this is why the bust fit so well.
As you can see, my bust point was about a ½” too high, but otherwise the draft fit really well through the bust. I’m not sure why, but the waist andhips ended up about 2” too high each.
The DressPatternMaking.com Method
I was really excited to try the DressPatternMaking.com method, as Maria, the designer behind the method, talks a lot about big boobs on her website. She’s an F bra cup herself, and this made me really hopeful that she’d understand the needs of the busty sewist.
Unfortunately, while Maria does try to cater to bigger busts, her “bigger” wasn’t quite big enough for me. I’m an F cup in garment patterns, and her drafting instructions only included dart measurements up to a DD/E. I did a little math to figure out the number of inches between each cup interval and made my own F cup darts.
Well, it didn’t work super well. While the full bust was pretty good, the high bust was large and had, again, the dreaded armpit wings. In the picture, I’ve added an additional ½” to the side dart and taken a ½” armscye dart on the right side, but the left side was left as-drafted. The shoulder slope also needed some adjustments.
I wanted to love this method, but I just didn’t.
The Comparison
Here’s what the patterns looked like, lined up next to each other:
As you can see, there’s a lot of differences here! The shoulder slopes on the Cal Patch (right) and DressPatternMaking (left) drafts are much shallower than that on the Natalie Bray draft (center). They also each used different dart configurations: While all three used waist darts, the Bray method was unique in using a shoulder dart, and the DressPatternMaking method was unique in using a side seam dart.
Comparing just the Bray (center) and Patch (right) methods, it’s easy to see why my Bray draft was too short at the waist and hip. Though both of these methods were supposed to go to my hip, something went awry with that goal in the Bray draft.
Unlike the other two, the DressPatternMaking draft (left) is only intended to go to the waist. It can then be combined with her skirt draft to create a full dress sloper.
The Winner: Frankenstein’s Monster
So which method won? If we’re talking just boobs, I’d say the Natalie Bray method did the best job of capturing high and full bust. In other words, it was the only method that didn’t beg for either a re-draft and full bust adjustment, or for extra darts to be taken to do a backwards FBA. But Cal Patch fit best through the lower body, from waist down.
So why not combine the two methods? Why not, indeed!
For my final sloper, I used the Natalie Bray draft from waist up, and blended it with the Cal Patch draft from waist down. This resulted in a very close to second skin draft, as you can see here.
Lindsie (she/her) is a boobalicious sewist on a mission to get pattern designers to recognize that the average boob-having person wears a DD cup, not a B. Her mom taught her to sew when she was a small child, and she’s loved it ever since. She is a lawyer, dog mom, dancer, and plant-based foodie. You can check out more busty sewing content on Instagram @sewbusty or at sewbusty.com.
As someone on the spectrum, I’ve always had booby issues. I don’t want to show my nipples and running is… problematic. However, I hate hate HATE bra’s! The straps,the seams, the pressure on the ribs, I just can’t! I get sensory overload just thinking about it! I even tried tape, but guess who’s allergic to the adhesive? Yeah, that was fun. Not. I’m wondering if it’s possible to do a post on good solutions for people with, ahem, ‘autism alps’
Please post a link to the video of the Italian woman tailor. Thanks.
Thanks for this, Lindsie!
After sewing imperfectly fitting garments for 45 years, I didn’t even know there WERE different methods of creating slopers. I thought there was only draping vs flat pattern. Suzy’s Craftsy classes were a disappointment to me too. I’m “only” a DD but plus sized so the girls are smallish in proportion to the rest of me. Suzy is a great teacher but after VERY carefully following her directions, I still got slopers that didn’t fit. I gave up on trying to create the perfect sloper.
Learning there are different methods is eye opening for me and now I’m inspired to try again.
I, too, need some lessons on what to DO with the slopers after.
One positive for me is that I‘ve learned to enjoy pattern alterations a great deal, almost more than sewing!
If I could just perfect slopers I’d be a happy camper.
Thanks for bravely posting photos wearing only your slopers! You have a lovely figure!!
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Hi, Lindsie
This was a great idea, comparing the methods! Thanks so much for sharing this.
I’m also blessed (34H) and NEED to find a way to make tops and dresses that fit. Off the rack is a cruel joke since my measurements are so whacky and SO far off the standard. Not only do I have large chesticles, I’m 5’2″, I have a 5″ shoulder length, I’m narrow-ish across the back, and with the extra weight from the past few years, I’m now also “plus size”. If something from a store fits in my chest or waist, then EVERYTHING else is ridiculously oversized, the side seam still sits at least 2″ forward of where it should be at the bustline, and the armholes are sovery wrong.
I drafted a bodice block using The DressPatternMaking.com Method (her new method she has on YouTube), but haven’t had the time to make up a sloper. I’m a little afraid it will be flop for me, because the side seam shoots out sideways so much. I plan to redraft, before making it in muslin. I also think I’m going to try to recreate a sloper from a YouTube video of an Italian woman tailor who teaches tailoring and design. She made a custom muslin for a sheath dress and it was magical to watch her draft the front bodice in 4:08 minutes!
See you on the flipside!
Please post a link to the video of the Italian woman tailor. Thanks.
Hi, Lindsie
This was a great idea, comparing the methods! Thanks so much for sharing this.
I’m also blessed (34H) and NEED to find a way to make tops and dresses that fit. Off the rack is a cruel joke since my measurements are so whacky and SO far off the standard. Not only do I have large chesticles, I’m 5’2″, I have a 5″ shoulder length, I’m narrow-ish across the back, and with the extra weight from the past few years, I’m now also “plus size”. If something from a store fits in my chest or waist, then EVERYTHING else is ridiculously oversized, the side seam still sits at least 2″ forward of where it should be at the bustline, and the armholes are sovery wrong.
I drafted a bodice block using The DressPatternMaking.com Method, but haven’t had the time to make up a sloper. I’m a little afraid it will be flop for me, because the side seam shoots out sideways so much. I plan to redraft, before making it in muslin. I also think I’m going to try to recreate a sloper from a YouTube video of an Italian woman tailor who teaches tailoring and design. She made a custom muslin for a sheath dress and it was magical to watch her draft the front bodice in 4:08 minutes!
See you on the flipside!
After years of this fitting struggle I resolved this problem by investing in the Sure fit design products. Have used my basic to make many tops and dresses. My bust line is no longer a issue. If I did not want to spend the money on sure fit I would suggest a basic slopper dress with darts using Bootstrap patterns. For some sewers this might be an acceptable alternative.
I have been fiendishly working on fit for what feels like years. Probably because I have been! Recently I took Alexandra Morgan’s course on fit which is excellent.I highly recommend her. I’ve had the privilege of working with her in person here in Victoria, BC but she has an amazing array of videos on youtube that are super helpful. I’ve tweaked my sewing model to be more accurate and recently decided I needed a draft of my block. No getting away from it. We need that pattern to compare to other patterns we’re working with if we don’t want to make mulins endlessly. I have a draft that I downloaded yesterday from freesewing.org. I highly recommend anyone try who is intimidated about making their own from measurements. I have yet to sew it up so I can’t say 100% how great the fit will be but with all the various measurements I took I expect to be impressed 🙂 It looked right. At least now I have a draft pattern of my block (actually 2 different ones which is included on the site as a starting point.
That makes for such a great comparison, very interesting to see how they all differ.
I don’t know how to use a sloper once it’s created. It would be great if you could follow up this blog post with a second, showing how to use the sloper to then create a garment.
Love your adjustments . Will give this a try. Please tell Lindsie to not wear bikini underwear as it cuts right into her hips.
I’m sure you mean well, but this advice is not necessary or helpful. She knows what it looks and feels like and wore them anyway. Her underwear preferences shouldn’t be a concern of yours.
I had good results following Kenneth King’s moulage method as outlined in his book. The book gives very clear step by step instructions, all the way to converting the initial dart drafts into princess seams and then the finished moulage into slopers for a shirt, jacket and coat and is available on his website.
This has been the most helpful information on those dreaded boob wings I’ve read in twenty years thank you for sharing
I used “Shapes of Fabric” method for my bodice sloper (“F” cup). It worked well. My second muslin fit great.
Thank you for sharing your experience, good and bad, with these methods. It’s also good to see in the comments about old information & comments lost in the blueprint to craftsy transition, and how they fixed their similar issues on Susy Furrer’s method.
So the issue with Suzy Furrer is the switch from Craftsy, to Bluprint, to Craftsy. They have failed to import the hundreds and hundreds of comments from her old pages to the new site. Her method does work for this girl here, with a G cup and extremely narrow shoulders, with the tips from Suzy in her old comments, notably:
– the armscye dart and the side dart must continue to increase proportionately to reach your cup-size (i.e. you add the increments onward). The darts that stay the same at D cup plus, are the shoulder dart and the waist dart. The other darts continue to expand. (I had huge success with this) I sat there and worked out my little maths calculation to get there, from the worksheet.
– If you are bustier, then you split your measurement around the bust into two halves not by dividing by two, but by the ‘arcs’ of over the bust, vs over the back. This then means you’re drafting your bust where your bust actually IS.
If you do both these things, you WILL get an accurate Suzy method, with no ‘wings’, I got a near perfect fit the first time I tried the tricks above, and it was a recommendation she repeatedly made when Blueprint hadn’t fucked up the business model that worked for instructors.
Oh also, if you are busty with narrow shoulders, inevitably as part of your front pattern, you’re going to wind up shortening/extending the shoulder line higher from your original point, and then doing similarly on the back before you do the ‘shoulder adjustment’ at the end of drafting to put them on the same slope, which puts it back to how you originally sloped it.
I highly recommend starting again.
Yes! I really like Suzy’s method. For sewing purposes, I’m an I-cup, & my shoulder width is less than 4″. So very busty, very narrow shoulders. I’m a fashion student & we use Suzy’s methods in our Patternaming classes (with a few tweaks developed by our instructor). I won’t lie, I spent a LONG TIME getting an armscye curve down on paper. But I managed it in the end, sewed up a muslin, & was amazed with the fit. I did have a little bit of winging out just under the arm. My teacher told me to let out the very top of the side seam maybe 1/4″, grading down to nothing at the waist & bam. A perfect fit. I’m pretty short-torsoed, all my height is in my legs. My draft makes me look like I have a torso, not just legs attached to a pair of giant boobs! My armscye is a lot flatter on the bottom than what you see in most commercial patterns, but it works great for my particular body. I admit I haven’t tried these other methods, & that I also have the benefit of learning from Suzy’s book, which is hundreds of pages of information, & with the help of a hands-on in-person instructor. The book is available, but it costs a few hundred dollars. So none of this is accessible to the average home sewist. But I’m hoping to start my own pattern line with busty women in mind when I’m done with school, so it’s worth every penny to me.
Is it possible to access the comments from Suzy Furrer old pages? Thank you for the heads up about the comments.
Is it possible to access the comments from Suzy Furrer old site?
Thank you for this comment. I recently bought her course on sale at Craftsy but haven’t started yet. I am a G cup in rtw and have narrow shoulders, so hopefully this will help me get a better fit.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that found Suzy Furrer’s sloper drafting not work at all. The one for drafting pants also doesn’t work and I ended up returning that course. If Suzy’s method doesn’t work then I also would not try Helen Armstrong’s drafting method. I had the exact same issue with getting to the arm scye and the measurements just did not work. I had great success with Kathy Illian’s body mapping. It uses draping for the shoulder slope and bust dart and you don’t need to measure anything until you get to the sleeve. The only limitation I have found is that with her method you have to have a princess line if your belly sticks out.
I’m glad I’m not the only one that found Suzy Furrer’s sloper drafting not work at all. The one for drafting pants also doesn’t work and I ended up returning that course. If Suzy’s method doesn’t work then I also would not try Helen Armstrong’s drafting method. I had the exact same issue with getting to the arm skye and the measurements just did not work. I had great success with Kathy Illian’s body mapping. It uses draping for the shoulder slope and bust dart and you don’t need to measure anything until you get to the sleeve. The only limitation I have found is that with her method you have to have a princess line if your belly sticks out.
A helpful trick for using Suzy’s method for drafting pants: if your high hip measurements is bigger than your low hip (mine is–I think that’s kinda typical for “apple” shapes), use the high hip measurement for both. Even if the difference seems negligible, it can make a big difference, since so many other measurements & calculations depend on that low hip measurement.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You did all the hard work and showed us the results. I’m a lawyer too but only made tops for court and usually knit at that. I do pretty well with Silhouette Patterns after going to her hand on fitting class. I can usually sew them straight out of the package now that I learned my correct size.
Kathryn Barnhill
Absolutelife saver! Wonder if the Aldrich patternmaking book handles bust size. Ohh, anyone ever tried this challenge from the non hourglass shape perspective? Dare I try? Been wanting to dabble and learn to make a basic set of slopers, hmmmm.
I believe Aldrich has you make the standard B cup draft, then an FBA. That’s how Helen Joseph Armstrong’s textbook does it, too. I’m taking a fashion design diploma and I need to crack the code for us busty women who get overlooked by the industry.
awesome comparisons, thanks so much!
Yikes! I’ve been there/done most of these (as well as some others) and suffered the same painful results. Even when I finally got a decent ‘second skin’ the question became what to do with it. I would try drafting actual patterns for things I might wear, but the output was just not there. OK. Could have been my drafting skills but reality was I still didn’t have patterns to sew wonderful clothes. But I finally found something that works, at least for me and my girls. I splurged on the Sure-Fit system. Took a couple of runs to work out the kinks but I finally ended up with a sloper I can use to actually draft clothes that fit so well! Yeah! One of the aha moments I had with this system was the sloper actually shouldn’t fit like a second skin. The final results were so much better when I had some wiggle room in there. I’m not paid for endorsement of the system or anything, just tickled I found something that works.
Thank you, Pat for your comments. I am still struggling with the trouser master pattern but feel more hopeful about tackling the Bodice since reading your comments.