If you’ve had a peek at my book list, you know that I like a good mystery novel. Imagine my delight (not!) to discover a mystery in my 2nd blouse muslin. These two pulls need to be fixed and I’ve got to figure out where they come from before I can move on. Here they are from the front and from the side:

Since I am the tenacious mulish bull-headed unwearying determined sewing enthusiast that I am, I cannot possibly let these go without at least *trying* to fix them–for the next shirt if not this one.

If you see something worse on the front of this muslin, don’t tell me.

Please.

I think I’ve figured it out and it goes back to the cardinal rule of sewing: The grainline wants to point at the floor. That’s the rule, and you mustn’t break it. (I’m not talking about creative uses of grain. Masters of grain break the rule all the time, but they know what they’re doing. Masters are allowed to break rules.)

Consider this imaginary fabric swatch:

The red lines are the lengthwise grain, and the blue lines are the crosswise grain. The red ones correspond and are parallel to the single grain line marked on your pattern piece. The red ones want to point to the floor, and the blue ones want to lie perpendicular to the red ones.

OK?

There isn’t just one grain line that wants to point to the floor.

All of the red ones want to point to the floor.

There are admonitions in every sewing book you pick up about making sure you lay the pattern on the straight grain before you cut. I can assure you that neither cutting nor layout is the problem with my blouse. I *know* that I cut my fabric with the pattern’s grain line aligned with the straight grain of the fabric. There is something about the way this sits on my body that is preventing the lengthwise threads from pointing to the floor.

Posture? Something that rounds or sinks more than the average? Yeah. Something like that.

I think the center front pull is caused by insufficient length on the center front near the neckline. The collar is forcing the top of the blouse to come up to my throat, but there isn’t quite enough fabric to go all the way up, hence the pull. The other pull makes a bridge between the two high spots–my shoulder joint and my bust point. A little more length near the top of the armhole might allow it to relax into the valley that runs between those two.

Brunhilde, not having a neck or shoulder joints, isn’t always helpful with diagnosing such problems. However, I *was* able to reproduce the center front pull on Brunhilde by pulling up on the collar stand. I may have some excess width, as well, but I’ll only know that when I get that length thing fixed.

That’ll be on shirt #3, which is only in the planning stage at this point. Watch for it.

Tags: McCall's, McCall's M5433

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