Surf to Summit

Melissa has released another great exercise pattern that could so easily cross over into every day wear.

I only have muslin versions to show you, but I want to blog all my makes for this year before the year ends, so I thought I would show them to you anyhow.

The pattern is for a princess-seamed tee with raglan sleeves and integrated funnel neck.  There are options a-plenty - short or long sleeves, front half-zip, pockets, curved hem, sleeve mitts.

I must admit, I was tempted to opt out of this testing round, because fitting sleeves is something I struggle with, and raglan sleeves more so than regular sleeves.  Then, stoic individual that I am, I decided to "suck it up" and get on with it.

Here is my first muslin.  You can see all the wrinkles pulling up from the underarm to the shoulder bone.  As well as this, there is some excess volume above the bust, which is standard for me. 

I went with a trial-and-error approach to fitting a new sleeve.  To do this, I slashed the sleeve along the top of the shoulder, and then perpendicular to this in several places, and pinned the slashed-open sleeve to a piece of fabric sitting underneath.  It took me quite a few goes to get a version that I was happy with.  The first modification I did on my dressform, and then I enlisted help to do it on my body.

The final version of the sleeve is the bright pink one in the photos below.  You can see that the sleeve looks much longer than the white version, even though the underarm seam is the same length, because it is not pulling up over the shoulder.  Whilst I was fitting, I took some excess fabric out of the back.  I like the curved hem at the back to eliminate that strip of sunburn between shirt and bikini when body surfing.

 This is what the pattern pieces look like with my sleeve modification.

I didn't use the high neckline with my first muslin, so I made a second muslin to test the long sleeves and the neckline.

Not all of the wrinkles have been eliminated, but it is much more comfortable.  There is a bit of pulling across the upper back.  One sleeve is cut narrower than the other, which I prefer, and I also did an elbow rotation adjustment.  This is the first time I have done one of these and it is the first time my sleeve doesn't feel twisted, so I will be doing this alteration every time I make long sleeves.  There are still wrinkles in the sleeve / shoulder, but I am not sure what to do about these, but I think I will need to do one more muslin before I am totally happy with the fit.  Which will be worthwhile, because this is a great basic pattern.