Bilberry top - fit adjustments

Fitting is so important for me and I’ve spent a lot of time making this pattern as great as I can. There are two cup sizes that you can choose from, B- and D-cup, to help you improve the fit for you. With that said, it is impossible to make a pattern fit everyone. So I really encourage you to do adjustments yourself to make it fit your unique body!

Here are a few guidelines, and if you want to learn more about fitting knitted garments, I can recommend our book “Fit for Knits” where we deep dive into many more adjustments.

When doing fit adjustments, I recommend working on the sew lines, not seam allowance lines. That is why one of the A4/Letter sized pattern has the sew lines included (all sizes and sew and seam allowance lines are in different layers, so you easily can open or close them).

Combining B- and D-cup patterns

You can combine the front B-cup and back D-cup. In this case, you just start with sewing the back side and back middle together, and then you follow all sewing steps for the B-cup.

You can also combine front D-cup and B-cup back, but it’s slightly trickier. When sewing together left and right front pieces to the side front pieces, you should not include the neck facing edge into the seam (since you then can’t attach the neckband). You need to attach it by hand (or machine) to the seam allowance instead after sewing the shoulder seam and neckband. I recommend doing a regular D-cup first before doing this combo.

Petite or Tall adjustments

There are lines just above the waist that you can use as a guide for lengthening or shortening your pattern. Just cut them open and add or remove length. But depending on your body, you maybe want to adjust in other places instead. These lines are just a suggestion.

Full bust adjustment

If you often do a FBA to your pattern, I recommend that you choose the D-cup. That pattern has a seam from shoulder line all the way to the bottom hem, and in this seam there is a “built-in” bust dart. The seam is also shaped at the waist at both front and back, but more on that later… Thanks to this seam, you can very easily also add more width and height if you want a FBA on the D-cup.

If you just want to add a little width to the chest, you can just add width to the front side pattern at bust height. The total length of this seam will then be longer, so you also need to lengthen the left and right front patterns.

If you want to do a bigger FBA, you can slash and spread the front side piece and then also add more width. This way you will get a lot more shape into the pattern and both length and width will be added. Just make sure to measure the new (sewing!) line and add length to left and right front pieces so they still match in length.

Waist adjustments

As mentioned, the D-cup has a more shaped waist due to the vertical cut lines. If you prefer that the shape is more straight under the bust, you can make the seam more straight on both the front side pattern and the left and right front pattern.

You can also make the waist more or less shaped by adding or removing width all over if you want. The great thing about several seams is that you can add or remove at the “right place on the body”. For example, if you have a sway back and want to remove more width at the back waist, you can just remove width at those lines only. Or if you only want to add width to the front waist to get a more straight look, you can do that as well and keep all the other lines as they are.

Full bum adjustment

If you want to do a full bum adjustment, I can recommend using the D-cup for the back. (As mentioned earlier, you can combine front B-cup and back D-cup pattern, the sewing is more or less the same. You of course just need to sew together the back middle and back side first, then follow all steps for the B-cup sewing.) With the vertical seam at back, you can easily add width (and maybe a little length as well) at the right place.

Adjusting pleat placement

You can easily adjust the pleat placement by just moving it up or down.

Adjusting bicep

You can add or remove width to the bicep by adding/removing length to the sleeve opening, either at just one place or both at top and bottom. Then remove or add length to the sleeve cuff as well so they are still matching (remember that the cuff is cut on the fold, so if you add totally 2 cm to the armhole opening, only 1 cm should be added to the cuff).

I hope this helps and if you have any questions, just ask and I'll try to add more info in the future!