One of the challenges that I have had to deal with, when adjusting patterns, is the fact that my waist appears to tilt downwards towards the front. This seems to be something that can happen when you carry extra weight. My husband’s quick sketch shows what this looks like from the side.
So … why is this important?
When you have a tilted waist, skirts have a very uneven hem which rides up terribly at the back. What this has meant in the past is that, in order to keep the hem parallel to the ground, I have had to shorten it to match the level at the back. This has often meant that the hem has been much shorter than I would have liked. I suspect that, because the hip line is not falling at my hipline then skirts often twist throughout the day - meaning I am constantly having to straighten them.
A tilted waist also means that shirts just don’t ‘sit right’. I’m constantly having to pull them down at the front. As the waist shaping is not really sitting at my waistline, I’m not getting the right shaping. Finally, I noticed that, I could not get the three measurements, required to locate the bust apex, to meet. The CF Waist to Bust Apex measurement would never meet the other two Bust measurements (i.e., Front Side Neck to Bust Apex and the Apex to Apex measurement). This was because the waistline marked on the pattern was too high and did not reflect my actual waist.
I wasted a great deal of time trying to solve this issue with a clever form of triangulation. Ultimately, the solution turned out to be very simple. It is clearly set out in Sarah Veblen’s excellent book titled The Complete Photo Guide to Perfect Fitting. Essentially, you forget about attempting to alter your tops and just focus on altering your skirts and pants as follows:

1. Make a muslin of the unaltered skirt or pants.
2. With the muslin on, put a length of elastic around you so that it is sitting comfortably along your tilted waist.
3. Mark where the elastic is sitting.
4. Adjust the pattern to remove the unwanted fabric above the waistline (remembering you will need seam allowance).
5. Make a muslin of the adjusted pattern to check it sits right.

I just wish that I had stumbled across this information BEFORE I had spent more than a month carefully applying the doomed triangulation technique to both my tops and skirts.