I'm working through the "make a garment" phase of the results from a new sloper. My garment of choice is a tunic that's the top of a dropped-waist dress (meets my need for hip size). The body is good. The sleeve isn't: it's too short in the cap, so the sleeve sticks out at an angle from the shoulder and, incidently, is rather wider at the bottom than I like. When I released the sleeve basting from the shoulder seam down about 3 inches front and back, the sleeve dropped into place, with a resulting gap at the top.

I reloaded the saved pattern and used the sleeve adjustment to raise the cap height from 8 15/16 that AUTO gave to 9 3/4 (adding about the 7/8" gap observed from the sleeve). Haven't made the result yet, but it looks good: taller cap and resulting decrease in cap width. Here's the odd part: this change also decreased all four of the armhole and sleevecap lengths, while maintaining the same, good front and back armhole depths; it also decreased by about an inch the bottom width - also desirable.

This looks good, and I'll go make it up. Experience says this one's right.

Here's my question: with no combination of armhole depth and side length can I achieve a measurement set that duplicates this result. I can get the cap height and side length in balance, but nothing seems to narrow the cap width and bottom width.

Ideas, please?

quote:

Here's my question: with no combination of armhole depth and side length can I achieve a measurement set that duplicates this result. I can get the cap height and side length in balance, but nothing seems to narrow the cap width and bottom width.

Ideas, please?

Sleeve cap width is controlled by the Bicep measurement and ease.

quote:

Here's my question: with no combination of armhole depth and side length can I achieve a measurement set that duplicates this result. I can get the cap height and side length in balance, but nothing seems to narrow the cap width and bottom width.

Ideas, please?

Sorry. Left out the bottom width. That one is controlled by the Around Hand measurement and Wrist ease.

Bob, I didn't change any other measurements but armhole depth and side length when I was trying to replicate the effect of adding 3/4" to the pattern's cap height. The narrowing occurs in the pattern with no change in measurements; when I try to adjust a new set of duplicated measurements so the same effect will happen automatically, I don't get the narrowing.

Reading your message makes me know now that the two fitted shirts I made early in the summer also had the problem of being too short in the cap. At first I thought maybe I had made the cap sleeve style as I noticed that the short sleeve was not horizontal across the bottom. Maybe this is why I thought the sleeve was too small in proportion to the rest of the shirt. This would have been with ver. 6.10. I noticed also that the across shoulder, even though I did not extend the shoulder was 3/4" wider than my across shoulder measurement. I would have liked it a little narrower, but that, I believe is a default. I will check this out from now on to see if adjustments are needed to the sleeve. Thanks for your message.

In very early DS versions, I had to increase the sleeve-cap height - so I knew what the symptoms called for. The mystery, though, is how to get the same effect - specifically, narrowing the cap width and bottom width - by adjusting only the armhole depth and side length in measurements to raise the cap.

Reading your message makes me know now that the two fitted shirts I made early in the summer also had the problem of being too short in the cap. At first I thought maybe I had made the cap sleeve style as I noticed that the short sleeve was not horizontal across the bottom. Maybe this is why I thought the sleeve was too small in proportion to the rest of the shirt. This would have been with ver. 6.10. I noticed also that the across shoulder, even though I did not extend the shoulder was 3/4" wider than my across shoulder measurement. I would have liked it a little narrower, but that, I believe is a default. I will check this out from now on to see if adjustments are needed to the sleeve. Thanks for your message.