Hadn't considered which side to paste at all. Trying it on the next one.
Changing the blotter at 30 minutes was the missing piece. Still ripply at ten minutes but flat by morning now.
Same trick works on squeeze converters, just release slowly rather than snapping your fingers off it.
Check bobbin tension too. A double needle hem forms a zigzag underneath, and if the bobbin is too tight it pulls the two lines together and tunnels the fabric, which reads as waving from the top.
Also look at how much glue went on. Thin coat, worked into the folds with a stiff brush, then wiped back. You want it between the sections, not sitting on top as a layer. A thick bead across the spine is a hinge that can only break.
Drag lines point at the problem, radiating away from the place that needs more room. Lines running from the armhole toward the apex mean the fabric is being pulled toward the bust because there isn't enough length and width over it, which is the classic sign you need a full bust adjustment even though you cut by full bust measurement.
That's the trap. Commercial patterns are drafted for a B cup difference between high bust and full bust, so if yours is bigger you get a garment too big in the shoulder and neck and still tight over the bust. Cut by high bust, then FBA the difference.
Start with a 2cm FBA on a toile in cheap cotton. And measure your high bust properly, snug, under the arms and above the full bust, because that number does all the work.
The dart the FBA adds can be rotated almost anywhere afterwards, into the side seam, waist, gathers or a princess seam. The volume is what matters, not where the dart ends up.
Whichever you pick, spend the money on the awl and the thread rather than the board. A cheap awl wanders off your punching line and you'll fight crooked holes forever. The bone folder can be a cheap plastic one to start.
Recoverable, and it's the standard mistake so don't feel bad. Taking the side seam in all the way to the underarm removes width from the chest and back exactly where you need it to move, and it effectively narrows the armhole even though you never touched it.
The fix: unpick the top 10-12cm of each side seam and taper the alteration so it's zero at the underarm and reaches the full amount at around waist level. You'll keep most of the shape improvement and get all your movement back.
If you want the chest slimmer too, that comes out of the back, either a centre back seam adjustment or a small vertical dart under the shoulder blade. Side seams are where waist shaping goes, and that's basically it.
One pair first is right. Tailors vary enormously and you want to know before you hand over all three.
Three is normal. Two is lucky. For a fitted shirt with a collar and set-in sleeves, five is not unusual and nobody talks about it.
The straight-out-of-the-envelope people are either close to the drafted block, wearing more ease than you are, or not looking very hard. Fitted garments expose everything, while a loose linen top forgives a 3cm error you'd never see.
One process change saves toiles: fit in a fixed order and don't chase anything downstream until the upstream thing is settled. Shoulders and neck, then bust, then waist and hips, then sleeves last, always. A lot of each-fix-reveals-a-new-problem is fixing things in the wrong order, and sleeve problems frequently disappear on their own once the shoulder and armhole are right.
Once you have a shirt that fits, that pattern is an asset for years. The third toile isn't wasted, it's the price of a block.
Rolling it about ten degrees anticlockwise makes it vanish completely. So it's me.