Funnel neck shirt pattern

This top started with a trip down memory lane.  I was looking through my blog looking at old makes and came across this jumper from March 2017.  I really love the funnel neck on this and all the shaping around the back yoke but unfortunately this no longer fits me and has been handed on.

I decided I'd like to have another crack at this pattern, but this time just make it a basic sweater without the asymmetrical opening. I thought it might be fun to add a snap opening like this cowl neck shirt just to get it over my head.

So I reprinted the funnel neck pattern pieces that I needed from the Burda jacket,  and cut them out of some scrap fleece that I had lying around to try it out.   I then used my standard sweater pattern Simplicity 5133 to finish off the lower half, basted it all together and tried it on.

Now I remember why the original jumper didn't get worn much!  The funnel neck feels like it's choking me at the front.  After a bit of pondering on this issue, I realised that most of my fitting issues these days are around my neck/shoulder/arm scythe area.    I have that good old hunch back going these days which  affects the fit of the fit of everything in this region.   I did some work on this issue this summer with my gathered neck top  but I decided that it was about time that I created a new custom sloper as my original sloper fits my dummy beautifully, but does not always work on me.

Since I was trying for something specifically fitted to me I decided to forgo the normal sloper drafting methods where you measure your neckline, divide by 6, add 1/4" for the back and 3/8" for the front to get the width of your front and back neck, then use that number + 1/8" for the front neck rise and 1/3 of the length + 1/8" for the back neck rise..........it's all just a bit random.

What I did this time is take a washable marker and draw directly on my body all the lines you need to create a basic sloper.  I marked my centerline, my neckline, my bust point, my waistline, my shoulder seam, my arm scythe, my side seam etc. all right on my body.  I was then able to measure all those lines and transfer all those markings to a piece of paper to create a sloper.

Once I had something pretty close to what I thought was right I grabbed some scrap upholstery fabric I had lying around and transferred all my lines onto that - cut it with a lot of excess room around each seam, sewed up each of the seams and tried it on.  I was then able to finesse all the darts, shoulder seams etc to line up exactly where I wanted them. To get the bust and waist shaping I decided to keep the side seams vertical and  do all the shaping via an under bust dart and an arm hole dart.   For the back I ended up adding two darts to the back neckline to get it to fit nicely over my hunch back.

When I had all the seams fitted to my expectations I went ahead and carefully cut along each seam line (including all darts) leaving me with a no ease, no seam allowance pattern which I transferred back to my paper and I now have a good moulage.  

I drafted a sleeve to fit the resulting arm scythe and then cut and sewed a full moulage, with sleeve that I then fitted over my dress form and padded out.  You can definitely see, now that the moulage is on my dress form, how much difference there is between me and the dummies neck angle/placement.  My neck angles a lot further forward than hers. (You can see the previous moulage sticking out from underneath at the front - and the back neckline is coming way up the back of the neck on the dummy)

Now that I had a good moulage I could get to work drafting a new pattern for a funnel necked sweater.

I took my basic sloper and added ease and seam allowance. Since this was going to be a sweater,  I just ignored all the underbust shaping and  rotated the armhole dart around to the side seam.

Next - add in the design features - The original design that I was working off had a seam across the bust that the funnel shaping stopped at but that's not a design feature that I'm overly fond of. Whilst trying to figure out where on the bust to put the seam I decided that I actually just wanted to eliminate it.  Instead I redrew the front feature seams so that there were two each side - one ending in the arm scythe and one ending in the side seam.  I then rotated the bust dart that comes from the arm scythe again into a French dart matching the angle of the dart with the angle of the funnel seam.   

For the back pieces I split the dart on the back neckline into two and incorporated the seam lines into the two new darts.  I cut a muslin of the funnel seamed neckline pieces and sewed it together.  I then cut a straight band and sewed it around the neckline - I didn't add any extra seam allowance to the neckline seam which in effect moved the neck seam out 1/2".  I drew an extension of the funnel seams up onto the neckband, then cut everything apart again along the funnel seams to give pattern pieces for the full funnel neck.

And now I finally had a pattern.  I had a piece of fleece material in my stash that I had been wanting to make up and decided to use if for this project - it's probably not the best choice as it's such a wild print that the seam lines get totally lost, but it's a good test.

The main thing that I was worrying about was figuring out to to open and close the neckline  - however once I basted all my pieces together I tried it on and was able to get it over my head without any opening. I hadn't realised until this point that this fleece actually had quite a bit of stretch to it - I had assumed that it was non stretch like most fleeces. I decided that I'd just leave the neckline closed, however the stretch created other issues instead.  Mainly, I'd added too much ease to my pattern, so I took that all back out again and also modified my French dart to get better shaping. To finish off the neckline I recut the funnel neck pieces - cutting the front pieces off across the high bust line and sewed that as a facing inside the sweater.  I finished the bottom of the sweater with a 2.5" wide band and the sleeves with a simple turn under and stitch.  I stitched in the ditch along the back yoke seam to keep the neck facing in place, as well as around the top of the shoulder seam.

As I thought - the seaming is lost in the print, but I still love the way this turned out.

I did however want to try making this up in a plain fabric so that hopefully the seaming was more obvious and found a piece of sweater knit in my stash that I had forgotten about.  Its a boring colour - a denim blue, and not the snuggliest, but I thought it'd make a good test.

So after removing all the extra ease from the pattern I made it up again.  This time I skipped the bottom band and just turned the bottom under twice and top stitched, and I just used an 1.5" facing wide strip to finish the neckline, hand stitching it to each of the seams to keep the facing in place.

This shirt should make a good layering piece.  It's nothing exciting but I quite like it - the fit is good and I can wear the funnel neck without choking which is nice.

Sorry for the substandard photos - my good camera is having focusing issues, plus the tripod is broken so I've been taking these photos with my phone propped up on a window sill or whatever else I can find - not ideal but the best I can manage at the moment.