Eureka!

So I decided to try a simple fix that was suggested by a couple of people on sewing forums that I'd often thought of but never attempted and that was to take out the excess fabric in the neck area by pinching said amount out of the pattern piece and smooshing the resulting bubble flat...just mash it down.  When I was looking at this smooshed bit, I looked over at the armhole and though....why don't I slash and pivot and allow that bubble to escape into the armhole. It has seemed a bit small to me anyway, and I thought, why not...as someone said to me some designers made dozens of muslins before getting the fit they wanted...I'm just after a flat neckline!  So I did it and it looked fine...

,,,then I made bodice muslins out of them and do a comparison. Here's a side by side collage of  Opt #1-right side (smooshed pinch), and Opt #2-left side (pivoted neckline to underarm):

I remind myself that this is a  workdress and isn't supposed to fit without some bagging and excess fabric here and there, beside the fact that weight from the skirt will sort some of this out....but it does make me want to play with the pattern more....that's for the future. Right now, I'm really pleased with the flat neckline and the ease with which the dress seems to fit. I won't feel that I can't scrub some linens and sit and the spinning wheel doing some longdraw spinning and worrying about gaping necklines or a constrictive fit! Weeeee.

Redrawing lines after shifting

After pivoting the pattern to reduce fabric in the neckline, I've redrawn the neckline and the armscye.
At first I wondered if I was actually reducing anything since I was, in a sense,  redrawing things back the way they were.  So this post is detailing what I did so that those helping me can see what I'm thinking in my head.

Here is the neckline...

and the armscye...

now to cut a muslin and see what changes it has made in the fit.

I decided to try the new adjustments onto Dresda to see what I have now. I raised the wasitline to a bit above my natural waist...however, I'm still getting excess fabric at the neckline....

also have pulling over the bustline and lots of excess at the side, which I can pleat in ...however now on the back the center back is pulling away from the center line.

It appears that every time I make an adustment to the neckline and the the excess fabric returns. So I must be running in a circle here somewhere.