Muslin Draft 1...

I finished stitching my esprit dress muslin together today. The first thing I learnt - sewing curves is tricky! Secondly, I need to make some alterations to the pattern before making the real thing. However, for a first try both at this dress in particular and pattern altering in general I don't think it's too bad.

The Front: there is some baggy-ness around the front of the armholes, and it's a bit tight around the hips, so I need to let that out slightly so it doesn't pull across so much.
The Back: You can't quite see it here but it gapes quite a bit at the top of the centre back, and as you can see it has gathered up quite a lot by my lower back, so I need to fix that too.
To help me with these alterations I got a book from the library to help me with called "Fast Fit: Easy Pattern Alterations for Every Figure". I'm not sure what it's like or if it's even any good, but it was the only one they had on fitting patterns, so I figured I'd give it a go.

I got a few other books while I was at the library, mostly sewing ones, but also one called "A Guide to Elegance" that caught my eye on she shelf above the sewing books, which has some very entertaining passages in it. Here's one that caught my eye earlier on the topic of shopping:

"Shopping provides that same joys in the city that hunting does in the country - in both cases the huntress is rewarded by bagging the object or animal of her dreams!"