Saturday 6 November 2010

Shoulder adjustments - forward shoulder or square shoulder?

Joy asked me about the wrinkles at the front of my daughter's blouse shown in the last post. I agree, the photographs did look as if a forward shoulder adjustment was needed.
Unfortunately, in the photographs of the last post, my daughter had adopted a forward shoulder position. I have asked her to replicate this posture for the following shots. She did not find it at all difficult.
SAM_2348
As she is 13 years old, this is not yet a fixed position, and I am not planning to adjust garments for it. Instead I will constantly berate her about her posture, which is my duty as a mother ;). Eventually, she can learn to make her own forward shoulder adjustments, unless all the ballet and berating pays off.....
Here are the wrinkly bits Joy was talking about that are due to the forward shoulder position (point of shoulder in front of ear, shoulder blades stuck out like wings)

SAM_2349

You can see that when she adopts a neutral shoulder position (point of shoulder level with ear, shoulder blades flat against ribs at back) there are fewer wrinkles, but some remain.
SAM_2347
SAM_2354

These are the wrinkles I think can be fixed with a square shoulder adjustment.

I believe that a square shoulder adjustment is needed, because when I pin out the shoulder seam so that the taper towards the shoulder is less, the wrinkles at the front diminish.
SAM_2353
Naturally, when I square the shoulder, I will be adding to the shoulder end, not taking away from the neck end.
I will not make this change for this particular blouse, but will try it for the next item.

3 comments:

Joy said...

Wow, you're quick! Thanks so much for the pictorial explanation. That helps confirm what I've been avoiding - that I should add a square shoulder to my forward-wide-shoulder-with-enlarged armhole alteration.

Gay McDonell said...

I know all about berating - shame my son doesn't do ballet - cause the berating ain't workin'!

Carolyn said...

This blouse is completely adorable! And re the comments about wrinkling and the shoulder position...lol! this is why I rarely pay much attention to the sort of highly critical, nit-picky pinning that goes on sometimes in muslin trials in blogland. Not referring to basic fitting of course, but In my experience when seamstresses get into excessive critiquing of a muslin the resulting garment runs the risk of having no wearing ease at all... !