Ta-Da! Tuesday--Day Fourteen: Fitting Problems

I've got a love/hate relationship with my Easter dress.  I love it and it hates me.  It's either the pattern's fault or my body's fault.  I think it's my body.  I have fitting issues.  For starters, I have a short body.  I'm 5'4" tall, which is on the shorter end of average, but my length is all in my legs.  The Hubs is a good 10-11 inches taller than me and my legs are as long as his.  No joke.  There is basically no height in my body.  I'm short-waisted.  Like, way short-waisted.  If you slide your fingers down your side until you hit the bottom of your ribs you've still got several finger widths until you get to your hip bone, right?  I've got one and a half finger widths between the two.  My fingers start to overlap when I do this little exercise.  For this reason I will never have a slender waist.  It's impossible.  I'm like a balloon animal: my ribs are stacked onto my hips so there's no discernible waistline.  My two year old has more space between her hips and her ribs than I do.  I checked.

This is how much I needed to shorted the shoulders.  That's 7/8 inch right there.  And that's just on the front.

I'm also short in the shoulders and always end up needing to shorten the shoulders on anything I make.  A few months ago I started making a knit shirt pattern and made the shoulders shorter as usual.  They ended up being too short and I allowed myself the fantasy that my exercising had a magical effect on my shoulder height.  Because exercising increases bone length and all.  Yeah.  Anyhow, when I cut out the pattern for my Easter dress I left the shoulders alone because of what had happened with the shirt. Oops.  I had to pull up the shoulders because the bust and hips were in the wrong place.  It looked like I had two sets of boobs.  Totally attractive.

Tapering the short-waistedness.  You wish you were me, don't you?

The other problem with the short waist is that it I'm shorter in back and it kind of corrects itself by the time you get to my front.  It makes for a fun time folding the extra length out of pattern tissue.  When I cut out the pattern I added extra length in the hem to accommodate the part I folded out.  It was a good thing because after I pulled up the extra in the shoulders it was a lucky thing I had enough length in the hem to cover what I want covered.  I lost about two inches of my length that way.

Shoulder adjustment for me means underarm adjustment.

Pulled it up in the shoulders?  Better re-cut the neckline, too.

I haven't taken a picture of the finished dress yet because...it's not as finished as I want.  There are some studs I have on order (they finally made it to San Francisco from Hong Kong.  Woohoo!) and I want to do something to add length to the hem so I can feel comfortable sitting in my dress.

Being fitted at my mom's work.  Black socks are tres chic.

So here's my question for you: what should I do?  I'm thinking the best option is either a pleated ruffle at the bottom or a plain band.  I want a good 3-4 inches extra so my knees are covered while I sit.  I'm a modest kind of a girl and I also don't really like using my time at church as a thigh exercise while I squeeze my knees as tightly as I feel I need to so I'm not giving everyone a show.  :)  So what do you think?  Plain or pleated?  Other suggestions?

Oh...I forgot the ta-da.  Despite the fitting issues (and another I haven't mentioned yet), I got the dress to fit me and wore it on Easter.  Ta Da!