The Large Bust Adjustment Gotcha!
Video Transcript
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When I drafted my first custom bodice block back in 2004, the year I enrolled in a pattern making course at a TAFE college in Sydney, it didn't fit me at all. It didn't look right and it was very, very uncomfortable. I weighed much less back then, and I don't have my measurements or the blocks from that time. So I'm going to use Enid here to show you my experience.
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Enid is a body cast made from my body in 2010, so she is essentially a younger version of me. In between 2004 and today. I've recreated that block I drafted back in 2004, but using Enid's measurements. So I drafted a torso block, which here I have cut off at the waist to create a bodice block and manipulated the shoulder dart into the side seam.
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Here is the final block. And here is the toile on Enid.
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I had lots of problems, some more obvious than others. The issues I'm focusing on in this video are the problems around the bust and armhole. The large gaping armhole is clearly visible here, and there is also a loop in the armhole, though that's less obvious because this body is fixed in a single position.
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So for example, if Enid could stand up straight and put her shoulders back or raise her arms, the loot would become more pronounced and the toile would likely pull backwards the way it did on my actual body.
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Now the bust wasn't really tight, but it was the same as ready to wear clothing. It seemed a bit constrictive and there was pulling from the armhole down to the bust.
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I had very little sewing experience. My first attempt at sewing was the year before making this block. The two garments I had made from commercial patterns fit so badly, and I had no idea where to even begin with pattern alterations. So that was actually what led me to enroll in a pattern making course.
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I had decided that I would study making first and learn to sew after I had the skills to draft my own patterns.
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So after making this block that didn't fit, I went to my pattern making teacher who had originally recommended the textbook I was using to draft the block.
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do. She recommended two fitting textbooks Figure Analysis and Pattern Alterations.
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So my problems were tightness or constriction in the bust and a large armhole with a loop. The section on armholes said this... Quote..
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“It often appears that the armhole is ill fitting. Loops may occur in the front armhole. The armhole itself is not the problem. The poor fit is an indicator of another problem.
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for example, a loop in the front armhole may be due to bust fullness, pulling the garment away from the body so that the armhole does not return to the body and lie flat against the natural armhole curve. Therefore, do not be tempted to take out the loop. This will not correct the problem, but create others”. End quote.
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So I looked at the original textbook for instructions for a large bust adjustment, and this is what I found when I looked at it, it honestly didn't make sense to me.
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It looked like it would make the situation worse. It would make the armhole even bigger and also add ease up here.
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and yet the fitting textbooks was severely warned. Do not be tempted to take out the loop.
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remember thinking, well, I don't really understand this, but maybe the textbook is right and my assumptions there are wrong.
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Maybe I don't know what I don't know. Perhaps it will at least be better than it is now.
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At least I won't have the construction of the bust... Perhaps
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And so I tried it. And here is that adjustment. And yes, the bust no longer felt tight, but then it became big everywhere.
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I felt like I was wearing a tent, yet still somehow a very uncomfortable tent.
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a proviso, part of the discomfort of the block was probably some of the other fitting issues that I had, but nevertheless the huge armhole was not right.
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What I wanted was a fitted bodice, not a tent. In these front on and profile images here. The extra looseness I gained by doing the LBA might not be that obvious,
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But at this angle you can hopefully get an idea of the amount of ease I ended up with.
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This was not a fitted bodice block.
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that was my first encounter with what I now call the Large Bust Adjustment Gotcha.
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So what do I mean by a gotcha?
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A gotcha is an unexpected trap. So in this case, I thought I had a solution to a problem. It seemed clear in the textbook that this was the solution to my problem. Not only did the solution not work, it created other problems.
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The large bust adjustment changed the armhole problem. The loop disappeared, but the armhole ended up gaping even more.
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before I explain why that happens and how you can draft a block without having to do an LBA, a short introduction.
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Hi, my name is Maria and I draft my own sewing patterns. Over the years, I developed my own methods for drafting bodice and pants blocks, focused especially on achieving better results for non-standard figures by reducing some of the assumptions built into many traditional block making systems. On this channel, I share patternmaking theory, fitting concepts, and the methods I use to draft custom blocks from body measurements.
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So back to the gaping armhole. What is going on?
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The hidden problem with doing an LBA on a block drafted to the bust measurement is that the high bust measurement is not taken into account when the block is drafted. The armhole problem exists for Enid because the high bust measurement has not been established independently from Enid's body.
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It's simply assumed so. In the case of Enid, the assumed high bust measurement did not match her actual body measurement. So what exactly is the assumption? The assumption built into the block making method is that the high bust is 2in or 5cm smaller than the bust. Enid's bust is 37 and 13/16 of an inch or 96cm.
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Therefore, the assumption in the block making method is that the high bust is 35 and 13/16 of an inch or 91cm, but Enid’s high bust is 34.25in or 87cm. So she will end up with more ease, which translates into a larger armhole. So the LBA is starting from the wrong high bust measurement. So if there is a difference of more than five centimeters between your high bust and bust, and you draft a block using your bust measurement for the width of the block, and then you do an LBA., you will end up with too much ease and a gaping armhole and probably a gaping armhole.
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The bigger the difference between your high bust and bust, the bigger the problem will be. Now, there are some exceptions to this. For example, the Patternmaking for Fashion Design System. At least the fourth and fifth editions by Helen Joseph Armstrong uses mixed arcs when drafting the block. Because of that, the amount of ease people end up with can vary significantly depending on their measurements.
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I explained that in more detail in this video here. So “bust measurement plus LBA equals too much ease” does not necessarily apply to every system, but it does to quite a few of them. Now let me just repeat the assumption. The assumption is that the high bust is 2in or 5cm smaller than the bust. And another way to say it is the assumption is a pattern making B bust cup.
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So the definition of a pattern making B bust cup is that the high bust is two inches less than the bust.
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You might notice. And this is very important that it is different to a bra bust cup. The pattern making bust cup is determined by the difference between the high bust and bust.
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Whereas the bra bust cup is determined by the difference between the under bust and bust.
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so your pattern making bust cup is not necessarily the same as your bra bust cup. It might end up being the same, but they are two different measurements.
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The pattern making bust cups are generally defined as One inch difference is an A cup, two inches difference a B cup, three inch difference, a C cup, four inches difference a D cup,
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And five inch differences are double D or an E cup. So let me give you an example of how this works.
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If someone has a double D bust cup, that means they have a five inch difference between their high bust and bust. If they draft a block based on their bust measurement at that method has an inbuilt assumption of a bust cup.
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It means that the resulting block will have three inches more ease at the high bust level than the person with the bust cup
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they will have three additional inches of ease, which is probably too much on top of the ease that's already built in for the B cup.
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So a summary. If you draft a block using methods that use the bust measurement for the block width, there is often an assumption built into the method that your high bust is 2in or 5cm less than your bust. If the difference between your high bust and bust is more than that, you will probably end up with a block that has too much ease at the armhole or high bust level, and likely a gaping armhole.
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If you try to fix the loop by doing an LBA. on a block that already has too much ease, you will not get a good fit. You will have even more ease. Now what is the fix or the
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So I want to go back to the beginning of my own story. When I first tried doing a large bust to just in the textbook, it actually said this.
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If figure is a basic size, smaller except for a large bust, draft a size smaller, then make alteration. But there was no explanation of what a smaller size actually meant when drafting from custom body measurements, because in the smaller size in the measurement chart, everything was smaller. So did that mean if I was using my custom measurements, I made everything smaller?
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Or just the bust measurement, or just the upper part of the body? I didn't understand, because the problem is that a size smaller is far too vague to be very useful for someone whose high bust measurement is only, say, nine centimeters smaller than their bust. Reducing the bust measurement by one standard size, four centimeters or one and 3/8 of an inch might actually work reasonably well.
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But for someone with a much larger difference between their high bust and bust
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reducing the bust measurement by a size may still leave far too much ease at the high bust level, but at the time, I really couldn't wrap my head around what a smaller size meant for my body.
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So I simply drafted the block using my actual body measurements. What the instructions never explained is that for an LL.B. to work well, it should ideally be done on a block drafted to your high bust measurement, and then do the LBA. But the instructions didn't specify that because, as I've mentioned in my most overlooked measurements, the high bust video, the high bust
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Measurement.
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is rarely discussed or even mentioned in most pattern making textbooks.
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So once you understand that the high bust measurement is really the key, the whole thing starts to make much more sense. But if you are going to draft the block using your high bust measurement in the first place, you might as well simply just draft the block
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using your high bust and bust measurements DIRECTLY, rather than drafting a B bust cup first and then trying to correct it afterwards with an LBA.
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Okay, there is one more thing though... Incorporating your high bust measurement when drafting your block
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will get you a better fit. But to get an even more accurate fit for larger bust cups,
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It's best to separate those body circumferences into arcs rather than treating the body as one full circumference.
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so, instead of simply using the full high bust measurement and the full bust measurement, we separate them into the front high bust arc, back high bust arc, front bust arc and back bust arc.
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Using those four measurements, we can create the bust shaping directly from the body measurements and avoid having to do an LBA altogether.
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Because even when two people have almost identical circumference measurements, their block shapes and especially their bust cups
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can still end up dramatically different.
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So in my next videos, I'll be showing you how important the body arcs are, how separating the body into the front and back arc can dramatically improve. Fit, and why understanding ease at the high bust is important. So that's it for this video.
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It's ciao from me.