Negroni: Tissue Fit II

After the Negroni Tissue Fit I, I diligently traced and marked the pattern for alternations (so I don't ruin the original pattern). Then, we had tissue fit II where I made some pattern adjustments. Tell me what you think. Am I on the right track?

Tissue Fit II, no alterations (ignore the silly/scary face):

Looking at the fit, I can see the biggest issues to work around are 1) the fit of the yoke and the back shoulders, and 2) the fit of the collar and neck area, with that huge gape. As a key to these photos - the original pattern lines are in blue, and the original stitching line based on size XL is in orange. This is where I pinned for the first tissue fit. The lines I redrew to show a new stitching line are in black (I have not redrawn the seam allowance on here yet). From this, I hope you can get an idea of where I will be removing fabric and adding back fabric.

For the back, I knew I want to address the shoulder fit by matching the shoulder seem to Sam's pivot point at the top of the shoulder. To do this, I think I will need to narrow the shoulder width, which of course means making changes to the yoke, the back, the front AND the sleeve. Yikes, it's intimidating. The good news is that Peter's Negroni Sew-along covered this alternation in detail, so I have a good point of reference.


I used Peter's example of taking fabric away from the shoulder yoke and front of the shirt and transferring the excess into the sleeve cap as my guide for this adjustment. You can see the new line of the shoulder in black in the above. Since Sam is not narrow backed, I am tapering the new stitching line back to the size XL under the arms.

The neckline issue is a bit more ambiguous. See that orange line? The collar is very, very high at the center front neck. On Sam's ready to wear, I notice this causes a crease or a buckle of fabric around the unbutton neck as this excess caves in on itself. I can take a wedge of excess out of the chest, as I have shown, but that leaves me with a weird line to true around the front button placket. Since the pattern is gingham and will have an obvious grid, I don't want to throw anything off grain. I could just redraw the neckline, but my instinct tells me there is something more with this alteration - that either the shoulder slope or the armhole fit is the culprit. Any suggestions?


My instinct wast to pin a wedge out of the neckline to bring it down. But this might not be the right move. I forgot to see what this does to the hemline, but I can tell from the photos that the alterations swings the center front across his body at an angle. I want to be really careful about what I do to the grain line of the fabric because I want the gingham grid to line up neatly up and down and side to side.

As I look at this wedge and what it does to the pattern, I think it actually pulls the slope of the shoulder down near the neckline, decreasing the slope. So perhaps rather than a a wedge, I should do a square shoulder adjustment by adding some fabric near the shoulder, to change the slope of that shoulder. Without the seam catching on Sam's pivot point and holding the rest of the shirt up, the entire bodice front will be able to pull down lower on his chest, bringing the neckline down too. Is that sound logic? I guess there's only one way to find out.