Rather than leaning in to being busty, I may be jumping off the deep end. Last Sunday I attended a six-hour master class taught by the Knit to Fit author herself!
The scarf I’m almost finished knitting for my mother for her birthday. See this link for a better idea of what it’s supposed to look like: http://www.craftsy.com/project/view/lacy-keyhole-scarf-from-knit-lab-class/1984%5B/caption%5D
After coming away with a fascinating new insight about necklines, I thought my blog post on the topic would magically write itself by yesterday. It turns out I need to take a lot of photos and experiment and think about it some more, so I’ll write about it next week instead. However, Amy Herzog introduced the concept last Friday in her blog post about deep necklines if you’d like to get ahead.
In the meantime, WOULD YOU TAKE THIS EASY-PEASY NINE QUESTION SURVEY ABOUT YOUR NECKLINE DEPTH by midnight Sunday?
After Amy Herzog shared her own and “Miss Average’s” measurements during the class, I’ve become super curious as to whether there’s a typical range of measurements for Hourglassy readers. I bet you’ll be just as curious when you read my survey, and I’ll share the results next week. To measure yourself for this survey, place the edge of a ruler or other flat object horizontally across the fullest part of your bust and measure from your shoulder seam down to the ruler’s edge.
Besides taking a ton of measurements, we also marked up photos of ourselves to determine which of three body shapes we were: top heavy (not my favorite descriptor!), bottom heavy (how does “bottom dominant” sound instead?) or proportional. Here’s mine.
Why yes, June of Braless in Brasil, my narrowest point is my underbust rather than my waist. Who knew?! Amy said she has seen this a lot for large-busted women–something I know doesn’t surprise June, but it surprised me. For more on this, see June’s excellent discussion here: http://www.bralessinbrasil.com/2012/03/underbust-survey-part-5-clothing-sizes.html%5B/caption%5D
Because my hips are only slightly wider than my fullest point on top, I am considered proportional. However, Amy paused for a long time when she saw my photo, so maybe there’s a question.
I am NOT accustomed to thinking of myself as proportional. I have spent all my time trying to balance my bust to the rest of my body and no time trying to balance my top and bottom halves with each other, which is what Amy suggests for the proportional figure. So I see some upcoming posts on this topic as I explore it.
Are you interested in figuring out your own body shape? Then see the steps that AzzyWazzy took.
AND REMEMBER TO ANSWER MY 9 EASY SURVEY QUESTIONS ABOUT NECKLINE DEPTH!
to me you seem very proportional, much more than me and we’re similar sized. And the reason is the hip ratio, my hips are narrower than my shoulders and also narrower than the fullest part of my bust. My narrowest point is also my underbust.
That’s really interesting, Tina. We should do some compare/contrast posts with our different shapes. I wonder what Leah is? We’re taking Lelaina’s picture and drawing lines on it tonight.
now you got me drawing lines on new and very old pics 🙂 I’ve been astonished to discover my hips aren’t that much narrower than my shoulders, I’ve just been comparing my figure to super hourglassy figures and made a bigger deal out of my narrow hips than they really are. Also it seems my underbust and waist are competing neck to neck which is narrower. If you look at my back silhouette, then definately the waist.
I’ll have to take this tomorrow but I’m interested in the results! I think my answers are probably pretty different now than prepregnancy because my bust is a lot bigger so there is more cleavage to cover! Oh, and thanks for the mention, I wish more women realized how common it is to have the underbust as the smallest part of your body. I’ve heard so many women use pretty negative terms to describe their body because of it when in reality it’s very, very common.
Wish I had thought to get your expert survey-writing input before I posted this! Would love it if you find you have time to help analyze the results. 🙂
Shoot me an email if you need any help! The one suggestion I’d make for the future is to use Google Documents. That way you can run the survey as long as you want and also get as many entries as you want. Most other survey hosting places puts limits on both. 🙁 Also, with google documents you just copy and paste the html directly into your blog and can pass it on to others if you’d like. 😉
Weird- I experimented and imagined lines on a few photos (I didn’t want to upload them or mark them up right now) with and without a bra. I realized I usually *think* of myself as top heavy probably because I look in the mirror most when I’m at home not wearing a bra, but with most photos with a bra on I do just look proportional!
Isn’t it amazing?
I’m definitely top heavy (my hip measurement is about 7 inches smaller than my bust measurement), but I’ll take the test tomorrow!
Astrid, telling you that I planned to write about necklines on Wednesday was a surefire method for me to keep from doing it.
I think that many Hourglassy readers will find their bust to be their widest point on top, but Amy said that it can also be the shoulders. She told us that most runway models are actually top heavy!
are these lines purely drawn on the front image? Because this way my underbust isn’t my narrowest point, instead it’s the waist more or less but in round measurements it’s not so. But my hips are definately narrower that my bust.
We focused on the front in class, and that’s really Amy’s emphasis. I still need to read the book to understand the implications for the side profile.
I’m technically proportional (though in the round my hips are the tiniest smidge wider, and my bust is 2.5″ smaller than my shoulders). I imagine my shoulder to apex may be on the shorter side than the average since I have to take a good inch out of most patterns from the shoulder to get things to fit properly.
How nice that your shoulders are wider than your bust! I’m jealous.
Haha- well I think I enough other conformation quirks to make up for my shoulders.
Thinking back to my other sewing issues, I wonder if most companies assume all/most shoulders are normally wider than hips since most patterns are usually just a little wider than they should be on me.
Just done your survey. One slight glitch: the question about my everyday bra size didn’t have my size as an option – 28FF. No problem I thought: I’ll just put it into the ‘other’ box. But no – when I pressed submit, an error message came up telling me I had to pick a size from the dropdown menu. So now you have 2 answers: 28F from the dropdown (I could equally have picked 28G) and 28FF in the ‘write in’ box.
Just a small thing, but it might help with the analysis if you could fix it.
Thank you, Su! I’ll fix it right away.
I’m proportional.
BTW I think when identifying maximum neckline depth you are comfortable with it’s very important how many cleavage you have in your normal everyday bra. For me it’s from none to barely there despite most of my bras being plunge style, so if it stays in place and it is narrow V I’m ok even if it’s quite deep, but I’m pretty sure that I wouldn’t be so comfortable if I had a ton of cleavage on a display.