Coat - V8346, View A

I posted my first muslin for the coat sewalong yesterday -

Here goes, I cut a size 16, basted every line, and sewed it together. I didn't think it was too bad til I saw the pictures. The grainlines are straight, the shoulders are in the right place (I'm pretty sure).

Here are my 'I thinks'

1) I think the length of the shoulders and the width of the upper back are ok

2) I think the bust points are too high (or I'm too low LOL)

3a) I think the stitched waistline is too low - if it is meant to be at the natural indent of my waist (that's about 1-inch higher)

3b) but the waist is too tight when I match up the CF - so would fixing the height of the waistline also fix this ?

Now, I don't know how to fix any of these, so here are my pics and request for HELP ! :-)

Now - after a couple helpful comments from Cidell and Lisette M. (Thank you !) and a lot of reading of the few sewing books I have, I got up the nerve to try my very first pattern adjustment - a low bust adjustment - OMG, it worked ! - well it half worked - one side is done. I was way too nervous to cut into the pattern tissue so I traced the bust portion onto tracing paper and used it as a template, shifted it down 1-1/4", connected all the dots and resewed. So, one bust fits and the other is to be done this morning.

The waist on the muslin is about 1" below my natural waistline, so I measured the length on the muslin and asked DH to remeasure me to find out how much to raise the waistline. THEY WERE THE SAME - HELLO ??? Can we say 'confused' ?

I looked at the pictures again and tried on the muslin - the top of the neckline is sitting about 1" below that bump on your neck where you measure from.

Now that I think about it, the back waist is 1" too low, the neck line is 1" to low, the shoulders 'could' come forward about 1" and the bust is 1.25" too high.

If I could put the jacket on and make it sit 1" forward, I think the only line that would be off is the front waist line. But this is where the jacket sits on me naturally and shifting it forward makes it really uncomfortable. So I have to figure out how to fix it.

I'll work on it today. Vacation this week - lots of time to play with it.