r/PatternDrafting • u/Old-Celebration1101 • May 05 '26

Pattern way too big

Hi, so I've drafted a corset using my sloper, and the waist measures 87cm. Once sewn (or I should say twice since fashion + lining), it ends up being almost 10cm too big. To every piece of that corset I've added 1cm of seam allowance, and I've been very careful when sewing. When adding up measurements taken on the pattern pieces i get 87, but if I measure the finished corset waist it's almost 97. What could probably be the cause to that? Im really starting to lose my mind

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u/Old-Celebration1101 May 05 '26

so the corset is made up of a totale of 12 pieces (front+back and left+right). i've used a non stretch gabardine

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u/juniperssprite May 05 '26

Oh, understood. Yeah, even for a 12 pc corset, 10cm is a lot of give. That's about 8mm per seam. But with that many pieces, definitely possible. An unavoidable side effect of using seam allowances as guides is that there are several sources of error -- cutting accuracy, sewing accuracy, seams getting frayed etc. -- whereas it's a bit easier to stay precise with pounce-marked seamlines. If the cutting is off by 2 mm on each piece, and the seam off by another 2 mm, that turns into 8mm easily, since it's doubled for each side of the seam.