Flat/protruding abdomen alteration: theories on what it is and isn't

I have more than my share of fitting books, and I've seen several variants of flat/protruding abdomen alterations. In general, the protruding/large abdomen alterations add width and usually length over the abdomen, increasing the waist dart intake as well. The flat abdomen alterations do the reverse.

Now, I certainly don't have a flat stomach, so it had been in the back of my mind that I might benefit from the large abdomen alteration—that is, if I ever got around to bothering to do it. But on the other hand, I've often felt that skirt and pants patterns (and to a slightly lesser extent, RTW) feel too high in the waist in front, especially compared to the back. Besides, I often need more waist shaping in the back, not the front. So I couldn't quite square the two.

Since I've looked into it further, here's what I think: the usual large abdomen alterations work best when the front waist is small and indented in comparison. So the largeness has to be over and done with somewhere below the waist. As somewhat exaggerated examples, look at this Toulmouche painting or this Annie Oakley poster. In both cases the waist is quite small (due to the shape of corset worn at the time), and there would need to be quite a bit of front waist shaping to mold the skirt from the roundness at abdomen/hip level up into the narrowness of the waist. The same goes for Christian Dior's Bar suit, with its fitted waist and padded hips. Generally, the large abdomen alteration methods presuppose your pattern has the correct waist measurement already, and you just need more length and width further down—wider darts then take up all the excess at the waist.

But what happens if you have a large front waist too, or you have a posture that shifts your upper torso a bit more forward relative to your hips? Counter-intuitively, that might actually need a flat abdomen alteration, as it will result in less dart shaping at the waist. The problem is, most of the methods for those will decrease the front hip circumference as well, something you might not need unless you've started with a larger size than your hip measurement would call for. What some people do is simply leave any front darts unsewn, or sew them narrower (and maybe sew the back darts wider to compensate, if more shaping is needed there instead). The front waist may well need to be dropped too: if there's less of a curve then there's less need for length—though extra length may be needed for apple shapes.

Anyway, I'm currently applying this theory to a jeans pattern I'm working on. I've erred on the small side when choosing a size, shortened the rise length to get it shorter in front, and done a large derriere alteration to make the pattern proportionally bigger in back. I did add a dart in back, which isn't usual for jeans (normally that shaping's moved entirely into the back yoke) but I think it might look interesting; the tips will be hidden under the pockets. And I realized after all this that my fabric had stretch, something I'd forgotten about. We'll see how that goes.

Lazy wardrobe evaluation

For various reasons, work among them, I haven't been getting all that much sewing done. But the weather has recently changed, leading me to think about wardrobe planning. Now, there's no shortage of resources about this. Many of them take the "haul everything out and have a big think" approach. Nothing wrong with that, I do it sometimes, and probably anyone who's set out to find articles or books on the topic is contemplating doing something drastic anyway. But of course, it can't be done every day.

Day-to-day, the way I usually organize my closets is a rotational system. I doubt I'm the first one to think of it: Whenever something has been worn/comes out of the wash, I put it back at one end of the closet. I try to make my next choice of what to wear from the opposite end, or close to it. If anything really backs up there, that means it's being passed over repeatedly, and maybe I need to do something about that.

Other places, you'll commonly see questions about whether the item fits, needs some sort of repair/is beyond repair, is too outdated, etc. I'll skip over those and go to a few other, perhaps subtler problems I've seen with my own stuff.

• It's the wrong level of formality for what I usually wear. In that case, I might move it to either my "formalwear" or "lounge/workout wear" section, if it fits in there and I intend to keep it. (I use the same rotational system for those sub-areas, but I'm a little less ruthless with the formalwear because I'm not a socialite… though in view of that, I probably do need to stop sewing so much formalwear and costumes. Moving right along….)
• I don't mix patterns fearlessly, so printed and even some tone-on-tone separates can be hard to pair up. That usually means I need a higher ratio of solids to prints for that season.
• Some tops need a skin-tone bra, which I think are kinda ugly/boring, so I often don't have a lot of them. When that issue comes up, it means I need to bite the bullet and either buy more of those bras, or get rid of some of those tops.
• Short tops and low-waisted bottoms don't play nicely. This can mean getting stricter about the lengths/waist positions of things I buy/make/keep, or making sure I have quite a few longer tops and/or higher-waisted bottoms. (I think really high-waisted pants are problematic—harder to fit, and since I've got a long rise, they can be unflattering unless they're quite loose—so I tend to prefer skirts for the latter case.)
• The color doesn't match the palette I'm trying to work toward, and therefore most of my other clothes and accessories. There isn't a lot I can do about this, since I'm not willing to dye things, so I'm gradually phasing those things out. It does mean I rarely buy fabric online anymore, unless it's a site that gives out Pantone numbers, thread color numbers, or swatches. (I could write a lot more on that whole topic, but at the moment I'm working toward something of a Soft Summer/Carol Tuttle Type 2 palette.)

All of this lets me collect data over time, which puts me in a better position when I'm ready to do the "big think". I tend to make final decisions on what to get rid of a few times a year, when I switch things around to put the seasonally-appropriate ones in the most convenient closet. I'm trying to get a bit more systematic about that too; more on that later.