Fit for a J-Cup - No more FBA

Hello to all my full-busted friends. 

Not too long ago, I received this lovely email from one of our UK customers, who had this to say, 'Just wanted to say thank you so much for the wonderful Dress Kit. My daughter is blessed with J cups and struggles to find clothes to fit properly.  Although I am an experienced seamstress, my efforts to make clothes for her have ended up as hours of trial and error from cutting the pattern to finishing the garment (including countless fittings), and the garments never quite look professional.  They are only saved by the neatness of my work.

I found Sure-Fit Designs by accident when, for the umpteenth time, I was looking for a way to do an FBA for J cups.  Ignoring my two attempts to adjust measurements before making the actual pattern, I started at the beginning and followed your instructions to the letter.  The result, after simply adjusting the side seam to accommodate the Beyond E bust dart and narrowing the chest, was so amazing!  My first muslin was near perfect.

I can't thank you enough.  It was well worth the agonizing 2 week wait for the kit to arrive in the UK.'
K.R. - UK

Here is her lovely young daughter who wishes to remain anonymous.  She graciously agreed to share these photos with all of you.

Her 'practice' test blouse sewn from large-checked gingham.
Notice the horizontal checks of this gingham are hanging near to totally parallel to the floor.  That's a real compliment to the Beyond E instructions and SFD Adjust-A-Bust template.

 

Here is her 'practice' sleeveless blouse.

Many ladies venture into using the Sure-Fit Designs Dress Kit - specifically the bodice pattern - because they'll never need to do another FBA.  For all my newbies, or small-busted women who don't need this, an FBA is a Full Bust Adjustment.  You typically need to slash the pattern in a myriad of directions to spread the front open to make it wider and longer.  But not with the Sure-Fit Designs Adjust-A-Bust template.  This Bust template comes with the SFD Dress Kit and gives you dart shapes from A through E.

And when you are larger than an E bra cup size, I offer two resources showing you how to extend this template to make it the width of dart you need.

Read this article - Beyond E - in the SFD Learning Center Article Library.  Just click on this Beyond E link and look for article F.5.

Additionally here is the video showing you how to actually construct this template.

One other comment I suggested for her next blouse, is that for very full-busted ladies, you can always give one more measurement dot to the front of the pattern and one less measurement dot to the back bodice.  E.g. If you were 40" around for a total bust circumference, you'd use the 41" dot in the front and use the 39" dot for the back bodice.  Here is a short video showing you how to do this on the SFD Shirt Kit.  And even though it's the Shirt Kit, the concept is still the same.

For the newcomers to SFD, you too can achieve this kind of fitting success!

Kindly,
Glenda...the Good Stitch!