I decided I wasn't going to kick my own butt trying to get the bolero done before July 4th. It doesn't need anywhere near as much work as the dress did, but it still needs some. Also, this pattern keeps disappearing on me. Seriously; I have no idea where my Bust 32 went, and it turns out the Bust 36 I bought later by accident is missing the bolero pieces entirely (Pattern Rescue fodder). I had to buy another Bust 36 as an emergency, and I'm guarding the pieces like a raptor.
I added half an inch of length to the bodice and removed 1/2 inch width under the arm, front and back, tapering it out at the waist (the waist, which hits at the bottom of the rib cage, is OK but it was baggy immediately under the arms). The sleeve is giving me fits, though. The pattern packet shows a smoothly-fitted sleeve but of course there are a zillion inches of ease in real life. I darted or gathered sleeve head would look fine but it's not what I want to do this time. It also turns out that finding instructions on how to draft sleeves to existing bodices are not that easy to find. And of course I don't really know what I'm doing. I fudged a sleeve that fit but I felt like the shape of the sleeve was off, even though the armscye diameter was fine. Like I had to kind of wrestle with it to get it to match up with the armscye. I've traced a new one based on the lower-arm curve of the bolero body patterns but didn't have time to cut and sew a test last night.
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