Stitch Frenzy: a journey into garment making

I know that Burda supposedly drafts for broad back and shoulders, so I should have known that Burda 6680 , a nice, simple, building-block princess-seam A-line dress would need more than a basic Narrow Shoulder Alteration. Before cutting a muslin of the bodice I measured the distance between shoulder-seams on the pattern and compared them to my own shoulder-to-shoulder measurement and gulped at the thought of taking out 3 inches. I think I ended up taking out 2 1/2, and stopped because I was worrying about distorting the armscye.  I didn't do a FBA, because I've not done one before with a princess-seamed bodice,  and so I thought I'd try out the Burda D-cup fit first. I'm around an E cup and so sometimes I need all an FBA, and sometimes I don't. First of all: the bust-fit is great when I grab the shoulder seams and lift them about 2 inches. Of course, I can't actually do this for reals as a fitting solution, because the armscye disappears into my armpit. Do

I'm not someone who spends a fortune on fabric no - wait. I suspect my budget of leisure spending is heavily sewing-related. Let me re-phrase that. I've never bought any fabric that cost more than about $8 a yard. And $8 is pricey. This makes me feel okay about sewing up muslins (tester garments from fabric as similar to the desired end product as possible), and general less trepidatious about the risk of a complete disaster/wadder. I've only had one "Nope, I will never wear this" wadder, and that was a muslin I made of McCalls 6802. I sewed it up in French terry that I'd tried-and failed- to dye from white to purple. I'd bought the lovely fabric in white dirt cheap, thinking "I'll dye it!" - for some reason, possibly related to how much I mixed, the destined-for-purple yardage was a blotchy mess, but the destined-for-pale blue came out beautifully. The pattern didn't work for me because the cut-on (are they dolman or Kimono?) slee