What is Neck Width and How Does It Effect Bust Fit?

What is neck width? In the diagram above you can see that I have extended the Center Back (CB) and Center Front (CF) upwards and squared a line from each shoulder point – the measurement of this line is the neck width. As you can see above the back neck width is wider than the front neck width. Is this normal you may ask, and the answer is yes -it’s perfectly normal, in fact a sign of a well balanced neckline. In this post we will go on to look at the reasons for this difference and how this information can help your bust fitting.

Let’s first understand what the implications to fit are if the back neck width (BNW) is NOT wider that the front neck width (FNW). The answer to this is that the front neck will gape. My example block above is somewhat of an extreme example as it’s a contour fitted block that needs to fit really well at the above bust area. It’s a block designed for corsets and fitted garments and it needs to be snug! I have also designed this block to accommodate a C cup, so this adjustment actually makes that ‘difference’ between the BNW and the FNW wider still.

You can see in the image above how we can measure the back and front neck widths and compare them, here we are only measuring half, so of course you would need to double these quantities for the total neck widths.

In a block for a B cup (standard fitting block), the average difference between the two widths, meaning how much the BNW is wider than the FNW is generally around 6mm to 10mm – however this ‘difference’ will increase if you are fitting a larger bust or have fit issues and a gaping front neckline area, or a garment that does not sit well above the bust level. We are very concave above our bust level at the front and there can often be fit issues here when trying to fit a larger cup size.

Let’s take a look at an adjustment we can make to accommodate a full bust and get a better fit above the bust level, you may have already made a full bust adjustment and are still having fit issues, or your block may simply be gaping at the neck and not sitting correctly, here is a simple adjustment you can try.

First I am going to close out the dart at the shoulder, as a temporary measure to allow me to make the fit adjustment with no dart in place, it can be pivoted back after.

With the dart out of the way, now we are clear to make the FNW adjustment.

Plan the cut lines as shown on the front block above – we are going to cut this section of the block and move it over to the right to reduce the front neck width even more, this is a minor adjustment and I would advise doing it in stages, particularly with the block I am using above as it has already been fine tuned for a close fit above the bust.

What we are doing here is reducing the front neck width even more, for a larger cup size, the maximum adjustment I would recommend would be a total neck width adjustment of 1.25 cm (half an inch) to a regular block, or pattern you are working on. It’s always best to make these adjutments slowly and keep checking the fit.

Here we are essentially ‘fine tuning’ the fit, this can be a solution if the bust fits well for you, but the neckline is still not fitting as you would like it.

Here you can see that we have reduced the front neck width, we would now need to trace off this pattern section and smooth out the armhole as we have a tiny ‘jog’ at the armhole curve. Please note that these small fit adjustments do not effect the fit of the back at all. having made these changes you can now pivot the temporary dart back to the shoulder if you like.

I hope this post has helped a little. You may find all this slighly confusing if you have not read my previous posts on bust adjusment, It’s a popular topic for me and you can find lots more information in this series of posts on fitting at the bust!

Happy sewing and pattern making,

Nicola