What to do when we have gaping at the back waist? The pants or skirt is not sitting close enough to the body at the waist, especially when sitting down. It feels and looks weird, so what can you do?

This first post explains the correction for slopers and styles without a waistband. The following post will show you how to correct this issue on styles with a waistband. Remember that this correction works for pants and skirts the same way.

Gaping at the back of the waist indicates that the dart in the back is not deep enough. Before we even have a waistband or a yoke or anything like that, there’s always a dart at the beginning. This means you’ll have a dart there in your sloper.

Steps to Fix Gaping at the Back Waist

1. First, do the sloper correction. You will have to pin the back where it’s gaping so that it comes closer to the body.
2. Keep pinning and measure the amount you’ve pinned.
3. Come back to your pattern, and however much you’ve pinned here at that dart, you’re going to increase the dart depth that amount.
4. You will see on the pattern that the dotted line increased the dart. You will have to close that dart and redraw the waistline to get a complete, nice smooth line for those dart legs.

And that is your pattern correction! This also works on styles without a waistband.

In the next post, we will talk about what to do when you already have a waistline, a waistband, or a yoke seam.

This information and more can be found in The Fitting Book. Order your book today through the link below.