Last night I started fitting a late Regency-era spencer, and I snapped some photos of the process. I LOVE fitting. It’s my favorite part of sewing, but of course fitting on one’s self is hard. I use my Uniquely You foam dress form with stays and all the underpinnings to fit garments for myself, and it works really well, even better than the dress form does for modern clothes. (But at least modern clothes have fewer foundation garments, so fitting on myself is a little easier/faster.)

I’m using the Fig Leaf Patterns® 216 Velvet Spencer, c. 1818 pattern, which I’ve admired since I first spotted it. So far I like it quite a bit – pieces seem to match, thorough instructions, etc. These fitting changes in my photos have nothing to do with the quality of the pattern – they are quite minimal fit adjustments and are normal for fitting any garment to a unique body. (My only complaint is that she doesn’t do PDF patterns, which means I don’t get my instant gratification and have to wait a week after ordering for the pattern to arrive!)

I cut out a size 12 mockup based on the size chart and pinned it together to do a quick check, and it’s the right size. The back looks good, but the front needs a little help. This is just the back and 2 fronts, no other pieces are involved yet.

Step 1: Align Center Front. To do this, I unpinned the dart, put CF where it should be, and redraped the dart. You can see this created a little gapping at the neckline.

Step 2: To eliminate the gapping, I unpinned the shoulder seam and smoothed it out and repinned, which means the front and back shoulder seams are out of alignment, so I’ll have to add more to the front neckline to true that up. (looking at the photos, I realized I could have pinched out that excess like a dart, and then removed the excess from the pattern. I might go back and do that, because it’s probably easier than futzing with the neckline.)

Step 3: After addressing the CF alignment in step one and the shoulder/neckline in step 2, it’s time to look at the armhole. There was quite a bit of strain and the armhole is too far back for me (because I have terrible 21st century posture, not the shoulders WAY back posture of the early 19th century). So I redrew the armhole and clipped the curve to release the tension. There is still a little strain, but I don’t want to go too far at this stage. I’ll check it again in my fashion fabric, and I might interface the body to keep that shape and prevent it from collapsing.

Step 4: I futzed with the dart a bit more and called it good. I’ll probably drape that dart on my form when I get to that stage in my real fabric.

I didn’t make any changes to the back piece or the sideseam (other than lowering the armhole height a bit). Now I plan to adjust the front pattern, recut, and baste the front and back together. Then I will check the collar, and after that, the sleeve.