avoiding cone-shaped darts after alteration

[Lady_Windy]

Tried fixing the front bodice armhole gaping on the Style Arc Queenie dress by moving the fullness into the French dart. It solved the gaping, but now the dart tip is sharp and obvious, and no amount of pressing makes it look clean. Basically traded one problem for another.

I get that the dart got bigger, but I really don't want to throw in a shoulder dart to balance it out. What's the better option here... split the dart, rotate some of the fullness somewhere else, or just accept that this design isn't going to be perfect without multiple darts?

 

[theuerdank33]

This is quite similar to the same issue i had a few months ago. I moved the extra fabric into the French dart and ended up with a pointy dart tip too. And yeah, ironing didn't fix it.

What helped was breaking the dart into two and moving some of the extra fabric to a small side dart. It looked smoother and I didn't need to add a dart at the shoulder. Not perfect, but much better! Might be a good option if you want to keep the top simple.

 

[sw33tspot]

hi @Lady_Windy to keep the front clean, try to rotate some of that fullness into the center front neckline and turn it into a tiny ease or a gentle gather if the fabric allows.
it's okay if you're not into the shoulder dart, rotating some into the side seam or a waistline dart is your next best option. The goal is to get that main dart down to about 2 inches of intake max, then it won't be so aggressive

 

[thread2stitch]

Tried fixing the front bodice armhole gaping on the Style Arc Queenie dress by moving the fullness into the French dart. It solved the gaping, but now the dart tip is sharp and obvious, and no amount of pressing makes it look clean. Basically traded one problem for another.

I get that the dart got bigger, but I really don't want to throw in a shoulder dart to balance it out. What's the better option here... split the dart, rotate some of the fullness somewhere else, or just accept that this design isn't going to be perfect without multiple darts?

That's a very common fitting frustration!
Since adding a shoulder dart is off the table, the best approach here is to split the dart.
You can try redrawing it as two smaller darts nearby.
You could keep a smaller French dart and add a separate, shallower dart at the waistline, if you have one.
So the total volume stays the same, but distributing it over two smoothers creates a much better contour than one oversized one.
This removes the sharp point and makes the fabric ease over the bust much more naturally!