Final thoughts on Simplicity 3833

I got my second version of Simplicity 3833 completed in time for our short trip to Cancun. In this picture, we were getting ready to go out to dinner so we were in a hurry but you can see how it looks on me. For the most part, I'm pleased with it. I think I need to shorten it by a couple of inches as it looks a little long for the cut of the dress.

I also need to figure out how to solve a problem I have with patterns – I tend to have some excess fabric at the nape of my neck. My shoulders aren't the issue, the measurements for the shoulder seam fit me just fine. I just tend to have some extra fabric right there at the neck and going down a few inches. This is a fit issue I've had all my life in ready-to-wear clothing. The shirt I pulled together last week, the one I labeled not a success? I did a bit of tapering right there and removed some fabric, which worked pretty well. That the shirt didn’t work was entirely due to using fabric unsuitable to the construction of the shirt – call it user error!

Anyway, I need to read up on how to alter my patterns for this fit issue. God knows there are all sorts of tutorials out there on things like full/small bust adjustments, prominent shoulder blades adjustments etc, etc, etc. I just haven’t seen anyone talk about this and honestly I don’t even know what to call it. Gapitis at the neck? Pretty sure I’m not the only one in all of sewing history to have this issue.

Edited to add:

Whatever did we do before the world wide web?? Lo and behold, immediately after publishing this post, I Googled “sewing fit issues at the neck.” The first hit was this blog post. I’d suspected I might need to add darts or make any existing darts a bit bigger. It’s just nice to have confirmation I’m on the right track.