Transcripts
1. Introduction: Sewing is the magic
art of bringing 2D elements together
to make a 3D piece. I love that everything I wear is not only unique to my style, but has been tailored
to hug and fit my body in all the right places. Hi, my name is Robyn
Andrea Burgess. I'm a sewist and founder
of styles and scenes. A fit obsessed sewing blog
and indie pattern business. I started sewing six years
ago after decades of struggling to find clothes
that fit my six-foot two body, my budget and my
bold, cheerful style. I taught myself how to design and sew a handmade wardrobe. Now, everything I wear, I create for my imagination
and my sewing machine. One of the greatest
benefits of sewing your own clothes is that you don't have to compromise on fit. You can feel fabulous
in everything you wear. In this class, we'll start by learning why
ready-to-wear clothes and sewing patterns aren't really made to fit your
uniquely perfect body. Together, we're going to make a practice garment known
as toile or muslin. There are a great way to
practice sewing techniques and experiment with the designs without wasting your
beloved fabric. We're going to
make a shirt wall. We're going to take
your measurements, compare them to the pattern. Sew up the muslin try it
on and evaluate the fit. Whether you're brand
new to dressmaking, or you've sewn up a few designs that don't fit just right. I'm going to equip you with
the skills and language to investigate issues that affect
comfort and aesthetics. You can nail the fit
of every garment in your handmade wardrobe.
Let's go [MUSIC]
2. Getting Started: [MUSIC] Welcome to my
tailoring-to-fit class. I started sewing because
at six foot two, I just can't buy
clothes that fit. But it turns out that my not industry standard body also doesn't fit
sewing patterns, at least not without extensive
pattern alterations. It took me a few years to
understand where I wear my extra inches and how
I need to lengthen, pivot, dart, and grade
to hug my curves. I'm going to help you
get there faster. You'll be ready to
start customizing your clothes to ensure they complement your body shape and are comfortable to wear. My goal is to give you a better understanding
of how to fine-tune your fit before it
comes to cutting expensive fabric by
creating a tulle. Tulles also known as muslins are an important part of the design and pattern-making process. They allow you to test out how 2D fabric will sit
on your 3D body. A great example of some of the world's most
gorgeous tulles is the Christian Dior
tulle room exhibit at the V&A in London or
Brooklyn Museum in NYC. A whole wall of white fabric
prototypes of dresses, coats, pants, and blouses. This really shows the
level of love, time, and attention that goes into
well-made designer pieces. But tulles are used by everyone, not exclusively
couture designers. They're fantastic way of honing your skills without risking
your precious fabric. What tools do we
need for this class? First, we need some
inexpensive fabric and you have a few options. It's a little less sustainable, but I usually like a simple cotton muslin because
it takes away my anxiety around
making mistakes on something I want to
wear out in the world. To best understand the
shape of your finished top, you need a fabric that's
closest to the stretch, weight, and drape of what you'll be using in your final piece. Then you'll need
your sewing pattern. I'm making a shirt, but I'll share a few options in the project resources in case you want to make
something different. You'll also need
some tracing paper, a measuring tape,
a ruler, a pencil, and a marking pen
for your fabric, fabric scissors and
paper scissors, a bit of elastic, and your sewing machine. Finally, you'll need a
full-length mirror and a cell phone or camera to take photos or
videos of your fit. Now that you have your tools, let's jump into
our first lesson, which is all about
finding out why your clothes don't fit.
See you there. [MUSIC]
3. Understanding Fit: [MUSIC] Welcome
back. If you take anything away from this
class on tailoring to fit, I want you to remember, it's not you, it's the pattern. Your body is perfect, the pattern is not. Sewing patterns and
ready-to-wear clothes alike, are made from a normal block. That means that
they're made from a pattern that's based on some statistical
averages of what a woman or man's body
is supposed to be. That normal block is not
based on a real human. It's based on some
mathematics and some statistical surveys
that have been taking about what the average
woman is shaped like, or it's based on a dress form. Sometimes the
ready-to-wear clothes, it's based on a
single fit model. Just a woman who has the shape
that the designer likes, and they decide to create
a block around that. Very often, you'll find that these statistically
normal patterns aren't really going to
fit your exact body. You might have
more protuberance, or stick out a little
bit more in places, you might be more
narrow in places. What we're going to do
is look at the ways that we can look at a pattern, understand what size that
block is trying to be, and understand the
differences between our real body and
that paper pattern. What exactly does it
mean for close to fit? What are we looking for? For me, I think the only
thing that is a definite with fit is having lines that are
supposed to be vertical, be straight up and
down vertical, and lines that are
meant to be horizontal, be straight across, horizontal. For vertical lines, I'm usually looking
at side seams. Generally speaking,
most side seams, you're going to want to
go straight up and down, or perpendicular to the floor. Most waist seams, you're going to want
to be horizontal, or parallel to the floor. Other than that,
pretty much everything else is a matter of taste
when it comes to fit. There are additional
lines that get formed when you're sticking
out a bit too much, or maybe you're not
filling it out enough. Those are drag lines. Generally speaking, drag
lines are representation that something doesn't
have enough fabric or has too much fabric
to go over your body. We'll get into that a little bit later in this class about how do we remove drag
lines and identify them. The other part of fit that's
really important is comfort. All clothes should
be comfortable. They should empower you to
do your daily activities. We actually have to
move through our day. So all clothes should
have some amount of ease. With fit ease, you want enough extra room in your clothes to allow you
to do your activities. You want to be able
to lift your arms, or rotate your body, or breathe, for example. For most clothes, you want
about two inches at the bust. You want around an inch at the waist and about an inch
and a half at the hips. That's because when you go
from standing to sitting, at the hips for example, your flesh widens a
bit and fills out your pants or your skirt differently than when
you're standing up. So you need a bit of
ease so it doesn't burst at the seams
when you sit down. That is fitting ease. Clothes also have design ease. Design ease is all of the
extra fabric that's in your garment that helps you to look the way that
you want it to look. For example, a knit
garment, a body contrast. That might be designed
with negative ease. Negative ease is only used
with stretch fabrics, and it's when you want the dress to be a
little bit smaller than your body so that it hugs all your curves and stretches
as you go inside of it. Positive design is, I want you to think about
an oversized dress, a tent dress. You might have 20 extra inches, or for a circle skirt, it may be huge, because you want
it to flow and be bellow and not to
touch your body. You don't want to see the
shape of your body under it. So that's fitting ease
and that's design ease. What we're going to
do next is measure our bodies and take a good
set of our measurements, so we know exactly
what our proportions are as we're tailoring
our fit. [MUSIC]
4. Taking Your Measurements: [MUSIC] I'm going to go
change in something a little bit tighter with
some negative ease so that I can take good
measurements around my own body and show
you how to as well. I put on this dress
so I have something nice and tight to
check my measurements. Make sure that you're wearing whatever undergarments
you're going to wear under your finished piece, so whatever bra that is, whatever shape where that
might be because you'll get a different shape depending upon the different undergarments
that you're wearing. In order to help this fit along, I'm going to use
some elastic first. You just want to cut the
elastic off so that you can create parallel
lines at your bust, your waist, and your hip. This is going to help you as you measure between the
different distances. [MUSIC] Now that I have these
tied around me, I'm just going to check and see if they're parallel
to the ground. I just want them to be nice and level at the widest
parts of my body. For my waist at
the narrowest bit. If you can't find your
waist the narrowest bit, just bend over to the
side and that spot that you bend over is
your natural waist. At your bust, you want to do the full as part of your bust, and makes sure all the lines
are parallel to the floor. We're ready to grab
our measuring tape. We're going to take a few
different measurements now, the first is going to
be our upper bust. So just take the
measurement around, just below your underarms. Check for any twists and make sure it's
parallel to the ground and go ahead and write down that measurement
on your worksheet. Next, we're going
to do the bust, and we've already
created the bust lines. We just want the measuring
tape to line up with that and stay parallel to the
ground as good as possible. Write down that measurement now. Then for your waist, same deal, parallel
to the ground, check all around and get that measurement
and then your hips. Next, what we're going to do is the high point shoulder
down to our waist. This is a really good
measurement to help you figure out if the pattern is
long enough for your body. Because the waistline is usually marked on
the pattern and the high point shoulder
is really easy to find because regardless
of what you're making, you're probably going to have
a shoulder seam right here. I just want to measure
from really close up to my neck at the highest
part of this slope, down to the elastic here. This is why we
added this elastic, it makes it a lot easier
to find our waist point. Just measure at the
top of that elastic. Go ahead and write that
down on your worksheet. Next, I'm going to get from
my waist down to my hip. I just want to go straight down and see what
this length is. Remember, as you did before, just do the top of this line
to the top of the next line. Next, we're going to do our
back high point shoulder to our waist. This one's a little
tricky to do on your own, but that's why I really like
having the mirror here, or sometimes what
I'll do is I'll stand in front of my
phone on a tripod or something and take a video so I can look at the video to
read that measurement. Again as before, high point shoulder is
just next to your neck. Try to make sure it's
not twisted at all, and then see if you can read that measurement in the mirror. If not, go ahead and try
to get a video of it or a picture so you can read that measurement
off the picture. You could definitely ask
someone to help measure you, but I want to make
sure you're equipped to do this on your own. Those are all the
measurements I really need to show you
for our bodies top, but there's more that
you may need to take. Directions on how to take
those measurements are on the measurement guide that's
in the project resources. I'm going to go get
changed and then compare my measurements
to the pattern. [MUSIC]
5. Comparing Your Pattern: [MUSIC] Now we're back with our worksheet full
of our measurements. Now what we want
to do is pull out our paper pattern and take
measurements so that we can compare and see
where the difference is between our bodies
and the pattern block. In our paper patterns class, we went into a good
amount of detail of how to choose the right
size for our body. Let's remember really quickly. We want to use our
upper bust measurement in order to find the perfect size for anything
that is fitted at the bust. What I'm going to be
making in this class is McCall's M8287, which is a pretty basic
learn-to-sew pattern, pretty easy skill level, and it's a nice fitted bodice. That means that it's a
bodice that's meant to fit within a couple
of inches of my body. It has bust darts and it has waist darts in the
front and in the back. It's going to give
me a few places that helps me tailor it to my body. I would encourage you
to choose a pattern for this class that has
some darts in it already so we can use those to help us to get the fit
even closer to our body. The first thing that
I need to do with my pattern is choose my size. Now that I have my measurements, I'm going to compare them to the size chart on the pattern. I know that this pattern is drafted for someone
with a B cup. A B cup means that there's
two inches of difference between the upper
bust measurement and the bust measurement. In other words, I can take my upper bust measurement
and add two inches. That's the bust
measurement I should be looking at in the
pattern to find my size. On this pattern, I'm a size 16, so I'm just going
to circle that on my pattern and remember that. Let's look at our other
measurements really quickly to make sure we're
choosing the right size. The next thing that they
have here is the waist. My waist is a 30 and so if
I look at the pattern here, a size 16 also has
a 30 inch waist. Then the hip measurement. My hips are a 43 right now and, on this pattern, I'm somewhere
between an 18 and a 20. I know from looking at this
that I can choose a size 16 probably and then I might need to do something
different at the hip. Let's hold onto that
thought for now. I'm going to choose
a size 16 to make. What I want to do next is go and find the finished
garment measurements. I'm going to teach you
two ways to find those. The first is actually
really easy. This pattern now has printed the finished garment
measurements at a few places. For this particular pattern, it's given me my bust and
the waist measurements. Here at the size 16, the finished bust is
42 and a half inches, so I'm going to add that here. Then it tells me that
the finished waist for the size 16 is 34 inches. I'm going to show you the
other way to do that because not all patterns will have
it so neatly printed here. What they might do is have
it on the pattern itself. On the pattern, they have
some key points mark, and I'll use this waistline
for the example first. The key points in the way that
McCall's likes to do it is this little circle with an arrow inside of it denoting the waist. Then it has a set
of measurements for each size that's
included in the pattern. Again, I'm making the size 16 here and the waist
measurement is 34. That lines up with
what they have written here in this example. But if you didn't
have that example, what I want you to do
is take that 34 and now add it to your worksheet. We can move up and find
the bust measurement. This particular pattern doesn't have the little marker here but given that the
darts are pointed right here and it has
this set of measurements, I know that's my bust. Again, it's 42 and a half
inches for the size 16, so add that to your worksheet. Before we discuss
how the B cup is two inches of difference between the bust and the upper bust. For the purposes of just getting another
measurement on here, I'm going to subtract two
inches from my bust measurement to put my assumed pattern
measurement for the upper bust, so that would be 40
and a half inches. What I want to do now is just
a little bit of quick math and subtract my body measurement from the pattern measurement. First, I'm going to start with my upper bust measurement. 40.5 minus 36 is 4.5 inches, 42.5 minus 40 is 2.5 inches, and 34 minus 30 is 4 inches. This right here now
tells me how much ease there is going to be in
my finished garment. Once again, ease
is the amount of difference between the
pattern and your body. We can look at ease charts, which I'll put in the
resources section to see what is about the average ease that's included in different
definitions of garments. McCall's, for example, who is the maker
of this pattern. They have an ease
chart where they say about how much
extra room they put in patterns of different
fitting definitions. Take a look at that and compare to your
amount of difference so that you can
get an idea of how roomy this garment
is going to be. Before we move off the pattern, I want to get a couple of
more measurements to make sure that I understand how this is going to fit on my body. The first one that I want to do, because this is a
sleeveless pattern, I'm not going to worry about
shoulder length right now. What I want to do is
full bodice length and that's going to be
the highest point of your shoulder to your
waist along your front. To help me do that, I'm just going to
move my ruler down to the waistline and making sure that it's nice and
perpendicular to the fold line. I'm just going to
draw a line across so I can use that line later. Now that we have
that line there, let's measure it from
the high point shoulder down to the waistline. The first thing I'm
going to do though, is take out the seam allowance. I know that this pattern, if I look at my pattern has 5, 7, 8 inch of seam allowance. I'm going to draw a
line here to take that out and then from the highest
point of the shoulder, which is along the collar
down to the waistline, I want to take that measurement. For this pattern to this line
here it's about 17 inches. I'm just going to take
that and mark it on here. You could do the same thing
with your back pattern. Another one that I'm going
to get is the bust height. I want to measure from the
bust to the waistline. In this example, I have six
and three quarter inches. Those are the measurements I'm going to take for right now, but I want to point out
a couple of things here. The first thing is I can see that the full
bodice length here is two-and-a-half inches less
than my body measurement. In other words, I'm taller than this pattern
is designed for. Pretty obvious, I'm 6'2''. One thing that's
interesting though, is the difference between the bust height is
actually positive, three-quarters of an inch. On my body, my bust
it's a little bit closer to my waistline than
the pattern is designed, but I have extra
inches somewhere. This tells me that I both
need to lengthen the pattern, but I might need to think about where I'm adding that length. Because on the pattern it gives me a length
and shorter in line, but that might not
be the right place. We'll pick that back
up in a later lesson. I want to encourage you to keep measuring the pattern
and comparing to your body measurements
so you can understand the unique ways that your body is different than a standard block
for the pattern. Now that we have
our measurements, we're going to use these to
make some adjustments to the paper pattern before
we saw up our muslin. Join me in the next
lesson. [MUSIC]
6. Customizing Your Pattern: [MUSIC] Back on the pattern, let's look at one of the first
changes that we can make. If you remember from
our last lesson, I had to choose between a couple of different
sizes when it came to my bust, waist, and hips on the pattern, I was between a size 16 for my bust and waist and
then up to a size 18, 20 for my hips. What you'll do if
you are between sizes is a technique
called grading. Grading is when you move
from one size to the next. If you look at this pattern, you can already see that there's some grading that exist here. This pattern has
multiple sizes in it. It has everything from
a size 16 to a size 24. Grading effectively
is the amount of difference between
each of these sizes. If you're curious, you can see, you can measure it out. This particular grade
has a half of an inch between the size 16 and 18, and that's pretty consistent
between each of the sizes. What I can do in this pattern, because I know that I'm going to need it to be a little bit bigger in my hips than
it is at my waist, I can come and I can choose
to make the hips a size 18, but keep the waist at a size 16. What I generally
like to do is use the hip curve which is a
certain type of tool or just freehand it and go from this
waistline at a size 16-18. Let me just draw
that on to show you. Now instead of
cutting my pattern right here on the size 16 line, I'll cut it along this
new line that I've made, and it's made the hips
just a little bit wider so that they're not snug here
and getting stuck to my body, and it'll still keep the
proportions with my body. If you're even more
sizes between, you can still do that. You can go from a 22 to a 16. But just be mindful that as
you gray for more sizes, it's going to start
to spread out in that angle or the slope of that line is going
to get more extreme. It's best to try to balance
that out as much as possible. For example, if you have a
seam in your center back, what you might do is
add a little bit on the side seams and
then add a little bit on the center back
seam so you're not putting all of that
extra width in one place. One other thing to note is that all patterns have an
amount of seam allowance. This pattern has 5/8 of an
inch of seam allowance, meaning that everywhere
there is an edge, there's an extra 5/8 of an inch of fabric there that I
can play around with. In this example, there seams at both sides so there's four seam, so 4 times 5/8 of an
inch is 2 and 1/2 inches of extra space that you can potentially get
out of your pattern. You will still need a little
bit of seam allowance so let's just say we can get
about one-and-a-half inches extra because my hips
aren't that much bigger than my waist
in this example, what I could do
instead of actually grading it here is try it on and see if I just
need to let out the seams a little bit to give myself a little extra room. Now that we've
talked about adding width around your pattern, let's talk about adding length. Many patterns like this one have some helpful tools here called a lengthen or
shorten here line. You'll find it on the pattern as this double line here that
usually has a label for it, lengthen or shorten here. That line tends to be
rather arbitrarily placed because effectively it's telling you you can add length here, but what if my body doesn't
need the extra length there? What if I need the
length somewhere else? If you don't have
that exact line, what you can do instead
is draw your own. I learned from looking at my measurements that I need
to add my length above the bust to give
myself extra room between the high point of my
shoulder and my bust point. There's no lengthen and
shorten line so what do I do? What I can do is
use my ruler and line it up with the centerfold, or if you had a grain line on your pattern that's running
from top to bottom, use that to line up your ruler
and then find the spot on the pattern that doesn't
have any notches or markings or design
elements, if possible. On my particular pattern, I have this little mark
here for the left side. I know from having already
pre-read my pattern, then that's used for the zipper that's going
to go in this pattern. If I'm adding length, I can assume that I'm also going to want that
length to be in the zipper so I'm
going to choose a spot below those dots, but above my bust line
to add my extra length. I just want to line this up
with the center front line or with the grain
line and I want to draw a line that just
runs straight across. Now I can use this line as
my new lengthen and shorten line where I'm going to add
extra length to fit my body. This is the same in
a bodice as it might be on a skirt or a
pair of pants as well. You can try to find
a spot that is not going to bother any
of your design elements, and just draw a line
perpendicular to your grain line straight across so that you can add
length or remove length. I've just drawn my
lengthen and shorten line above my bust where I
need to add some length, and what I'm just going to
do is make sure that I have a good line intersecting
that at a right angle, which I will need for
adding the length, and you'll see why in a second. This is my trick. I've added a line in and now I'm ready to cut in my
lengthen, shorten line. You just want to cut
straight across. Now I have two sections
here and I've added that line so that I know exactly how those are
supposed to go back together. That's why it's important. I'm just going to take
some scrap paper. I like to use something
that's an off-brand and I want to just take
these together first. Doesn't have to be
perfect at this point. I'm just going to draw a
couple of lines on here. My first line that I
draw is just to give myself a little extra
space on the paper. Next, I'm going to draw at the width that I want to add or the length
that I want to add. I've decided that
I'm going to add an inch and a half right here. I just like to use
my ruler and again, this is a great ruler for
any soloist because you can measure the width wise
up to two inches. That's my one-and-a-half inches. Then I'm just going
to draw another line so I can use it to cut it. I'm going to cut across, let's go all the way to the end. We can set this aside for now. All I want to do is line this up with that top line that
I've drawn on the paper, and then I'm going to tape it
down in a couple of places. Make sure that it's nice and
straight with that line. Now what I want to do is just continue this line that I've had on here all the way through the extra inch and
a half that I've added. The next step is to just
take the other side of my pattern and get that right
lined up with that line. Now my pattern has
been lengthened. The only thing left to do with lengthening the pattern
here is to continue any of the lines or
curves that I've now disrupted by adding
in this extra length. I'm going to take along this center-front line and just continue this
straight line. The same here on the side. What you'll find however, is that because you've
added length if you have anything that has
a little bit of a slope, so it's going at an angle
or anything with a curve, you're going to need to
redraw that line or curve. Just use your top point
and your bottom point of the curve to make it even
and steady throughout. Now that we're ready to
cut out our pattern, I want you to just
pause for a couple of seconds and do a few things. The first, write down whatever
changes that you've made. I've added an inch
and half here, I've graded out the hip. Just make some notes
just so you're aware of all the things that
you've done to the pattern. Meet me in the next lesson
where we're going to cut out the pattern in fabric and
sew from the sleeve. [MUSIC]
7. Cutting & Sewing: [MUSIC] Welcome back. Now that we have our adjusted pattern, we're ready to start moving into our fabric and make our muslin. When we start to
make our muslin, we need to decide what we're
trying to accomplish here.
8. Trying On Your Fit: Welcome back. We're
back at the mirror, but this time
wearing our muslin. If you haven't already go ahead and put it on because
together we're going to walk through how
to look at the muslin in the mirror and
figure out what fits well and what you
might want to change. The first thing that I want
to do with the muslin on is remember that it's
an article of clothing, meaning that if I'm
going to be wearing it, I need to be living in it. I need to be able to move
around and do my daily tasks. What I want to do is
lift up my arms and spin around a little bit and
bend over, as I need to. If it's a dress or pants, I definitely want to try to take a seat and make sure
that it's comfortable there and just observe all the places where it might be a little bit uncomfortable. For a top, I'm definitely
checking to see does it lift up when I lift my arms
or does it stay in the place. If it lifts up, you
might have a problem. If I'm making a dress or skirt
and I sit down and it gets real tight in my hips as the
shape of my flesh changes, you might need to let out
the hips a little bit, to give yourself a
little bit more room. I'm not having either of those
problems with my fit here. But I want you to make sure that every time
you put on the muslin, the first question you ask yourself is, is it comfortable? Do I like how I feel
in this garment? Once comfort is out of the way, the next question you
want to ask yourself, do I like how I look
in this garment? Is it accentuating my assets? Is it hiding the things
that I'm insecure about? Is it giving me the proportions that I like to see myself in? Have a little spin, take some pictures of yourself, definitely record a video
of yourself and just give yourself something to analyze besides just
looking in the mirror. Because remember, as you
turn around and look back, you're twisting the shape and you can't see yourself properly. As I'm doing that, I'm starting to
observe a couple of the problems with the
fit in this garment. The first thing is a
little bit of gaping here. Even though I haven't put in the seam allowances up at
the top that there may just be a little bit
of excess here in the center front that's
giving me a gap. I'm going to grab my pins and I'm going to
start to pin out the things that I think
I might want to change. What I also could
do because this is a muslin and the
fabric isn't precious, it's actually easy
to write on it. I can grab a pencil and write my changes directly
on the fabric. Right here, I know that it's gaping a little bit at the
center front, just at the top. I could pin this
down or sometimes what I like to do is just draw along a little dart and
then I might take out. Then I'll just remember that I need to get
rid of the gaping. Another thing that I'm
noticing is that I have all of these lines and wrinkles that are coming
out from my bust. I didn't already do a
full bust adjustment for this pattern even
though I know that my bust size is a bit bigger, I didn't do it because
on the pattern it says that it has enough
room in that spot. But just because it has
enough inches in that spot around the bust doesn't mean those inches are in
the right place. It's giving me plenty of
inches in the back here, but they're not in the front. I can tell from these lines
that I'm going to want to do a full bust adjustment to
make it so that I get rid of these wrinkles and everything fits evenly across my bust. Another indication
that I'm going to need a full bust adjustment is the fact that this
line on this side, my side seam, is not
perpendicular to the floor. I can see that it's pretty straight from the
waist down from the waist to the bust it's pulling towards the
back a little bit. This is because it just
doesn't have enough fabric. It's creating a line that
isn't quite straight. The rest of the front
looks pretty good to me. The hem is about at the right spot before
I put my hem in. Generally speaking,
the waste is hitting about where my
waste needs to be. I've added the right
amount of length here. I will take it a video
to check out my back. But what I can really
see here is that there's a lot of extra
fabric going on. I usually know for my body
that I need to do a sway back adjustment because I just have all of
this extra here. I like to have my fit so that you can see
the line of my body. What I need to do is take out some extra fabric here so it fits a bit closer to my body. As I look at this
back adjustment, what I can try to do is just
pinch it out a little bit to a place where I think it's
good and put a pin in there, so I can make note of how
much fabric I'm taking out. I can take this off and measure it and try to put
more pins in and try it back on and
see if that fixes the problem and if it does, I can transfer that
to my paper pattern. If I were noticing
problems with a fit and I wanted it to come in a little
bit tighter on my waist, either in the front
or in the back, what I could do is take out these basic darts and resew
them a little bit smaller. But the problems that I have
mean that I actually need more fabric and less
fabric in the length. So I'm going to
need to go back to my pattern to make
those adjustments. Now it's your turn. Put on your muslin and try it on and ask yourself
those questions. Is it comfortable? Do I feel competent wearing it? Are there drag lines? Are there bits that
aren't accentuating my body the way that I
want it to be accentuated? Meet me in the next lesson
where we can transfer the changes we need here onto
our paper patterns. [MUSIC]
9. Making a Full Bust Adjustment: First up is a full
bust adjustment. Let's define what that is first. A full bust adjustment is an adjustment that you
make to the bustest of your front pattern
piece so that you can have a little bit more
room around your bust area. Most pattern blocks are designed
for women with a B cup. A B cup you remember is
two inches of difference between your bust measurement and your upper bust measurement. If you have a
different cup size, either smaller or larger, you will have a different
amount of difference between your upper bust measurement
and your first measurement. A full bust adjustment
again is for a larger bust, while a small bust adjustment
is for a smaller bust. In order to figure
out how much we need to make in a
full bust adjustment, think about what
your cup size is. If your cup size is C, that means you have
three inches difference between your bust
and your upper bust. Since the pattern is drafted for B cup with two
inches difference, whatever your cup size is, subtract that two inches. So a C cup, you'd have one additional
inch that you need, a D cup, two additional inches that you need, and so forth. Remember that those inches are distributed on two
sides of your pattern. We're only working with one
half of your front here. For a D cup, where you need
two additional inches, the adjustment that
we're going to make is only one inch or one
half of that difference. Next, I'm going to
show you how to cut into your pattern and add the extra fabric
where it needs to go so you have those
additional inches. The first thing that
we want to do for our full bust adjustment
is to find our bust point. If your bust point isn't
already on your pattern and sometimes they look
like this with a round circle with a
cross in the middle, you can draw it on. Grab your ruler and line it up with the center
of your waist dart and make a line
that goes straight up perpendicular
to your waistline. You want to go straight
up along the grain line. Next, look at your side dart. Draw a line that goes through the center of your side dart. We're actually going to
want that line to connect all the way down to the bottom because we're going
to make a cut. We can just connect that backup. The intersection
of those two lines is going to be about
your bust point. Remember that your
bust point never matches exactly at the end of your dart legs because you want to leave a little bit of
extra space at that point. Just extend those lines all
the way into the scene. Now we need to draw
a third line that goes from the bust dart
up into the arm hole. Make sure that you
find a spot that doesn't intersect with
any of your notches, but it doesn't matter
exactly where you put it, just try to put it in
the lower arm hole. Now the next thing I want
you to do is to find the seam allowance at that arm hole and mark that
along your first line. Again, this pattern has five-eighths of an
inch seam allowance, so I'm just going to
mark a little hash here at five-eighths of an inch. You'll see what that's
for in just a second. What we're going to do
next is actually cut into our pattern and create a hinge
so that we can open it up. We added this little
mark here so that we can create the pivot
point for our hinge. The first cut that I
want you to make is a little snip that
goes up to this line, but not through this line. [NOISE] Next, you want to cut all the way
up through this dart to your bust point and then follow
this line to that hinge. Make sure you don't cut all
the way through because you want to leave a little bit
that you can pivot it on. [NOISE] Don't pull too hard, but you can see how
you can now open this up and add extra space. What we're going to do is go over to our extra
paper for a second. Remember what we said before
about the difference between our bust size and
the pattern size. Again, at a C cup, you need to add an extra
inch throughout the bust. You need to add two halves of an inch or you need to do a one-half inch full
bust adjustment. For a D cup, you need to do a one-inch full bust adjustment. I'm just going to
mark use this paper and create two lines that are one inch away
from each other. [NOISE] There we go. I like to just write in my measurements so I don't
forget what I've done there. Now what we want to do is bring this back
over to our pattern. We're going to
need another step, but I want to
demonstrate something first so we're going
to start here. We're adding our one-inch and then one inch is going
to be a straight line. But the reason why I wanted to bring this over for
a second is just to demonstrate to you that
if you just try to open it up by one inch
and you hinge it out, it's going to be at an angle. We need to get rid
of that angle. Let's take the paper
away for just a second and come back to that
third line that we drew in. For this third line, I want you to cut all the
way, but not through. Again, leave a little
bit to hinge on. [NOISE] The purpose of this extra bit is to be
able to hinge again. What we're going to do is take this paper and put
it back under. Now we should be able to hinge this so that these two lines
are parallel to each other. What I'm going to do is tape this down on
this one-inch line. Next, I'm going to bring this over and get the hinge right so that this line is
parallel to the other bit. I want you to observe a few
things that have happened. First, you can see that the
bottom of this is now uneven. The side is now a bit
longer than the center. What we're going
to have to do is open this up and
add a little bit of extra paper so that that lines up and gives
us a bit of extra length. Remember that whenever you
have any type of protuberance, whether that is a belly that
sticks out a little bit, a nice full butt, or anything else that juts out, in addition to adding width, you're also going to add
a bit of length because to go around that you need
a bit of extra length. I'm going to cut here and add a bit of extra
length that I need. To add this length, I can either draw a line
that is perpendicular to the green line or I already have this waistline here and this lengthen
and shorten line, so it doesn't matter exactly
where you take it from. Just try to take it from a place that's not
going to mess up any of the design
elements in your pattern. [NOISE] Then what I'm
just going to do, the same as when I added
length to the pattern, I'm just going to draw a line across so that this lines up. [NOISE] I'm also going to need to add a little
bit of paper here, but let's skip that for now. What you'll notice here
is that as we've pivoted this point to move and
keep these lines parallel, we've not only lengthend this area here which
is in the dart, we've also shifted
the angle of it. It's no longer pointing to
where your bust apex is. What we need to do
is move that over a little bit so that we
can draw a new dart. The distance that you'll move
it over really depends on your cup size with larger
distance for larger cup sizes. A good rule of thumb
is that you want your new dart length to be about 1-2 inches from your apex. I'm just going to draw a
line that's about two inches over and draw a dart. That's where my new dart
is going to terminate. Now because this was
the dart before, this is the new dart. [NOISE] It's gotten a bit
bigger, but that's okay. At this point, there might be a few more things
that we want to do. Because we've added an inch
here throughout the length, we've actually added
an extra width to our waistline as well. What we might want
to do is refer to a guide to look at other
ways that you can either close up this extra
dark that's been created or finish adjusting this waist dart or
take out a little bit of distance now at the waist and at the hips
that you've added. But for the purposes
of this class, I'm going to stop right
there and link you to some resources to
finish this up. [MUSIC]
10. Making a Sway Back Adjustment: [MUSIC] Next we're
going to move on to a sway-back adjustment. A sway-back adjustment is
an easy fix for removing the extra fabric that you might
have at your center back. If you have a very curved
back like I have or a lot of difference between
where your shoulders sit and where your
waistline sits, this is what this adjustment
will help you to fix. It'll help your clothes to fit along the outline of
your body better. I know for my muslin
fitting that I want to remove about a half
an inch of fabric from the middle of my back but it fits pretty
well on my side seams. I don't want to adjust the length that I
have on my sides. I only want to make the
adjustment from the center. For this pattern, I've already added an inch of length down my back but if you haven't already cut
your pattern apart, do so at the length and shorten the line
before your waist. I'm going to cut
that away again. I want you to do the
same thing you've seen us do with adding lines. Get a piece of paper for me, I need to go from one inch at the side to a half an
inch in the center. What I'm going to
do is just make one first line to show you where my pattern
would be right now, just to make it a little
less confusing on myself. This is my one-inch line. I'm just going to line
this up with my pattern. As I've done before, I'm going to draw a line
to go through here. But remember, I want it
to be one inch over here, but only a half an
inch over here. What I'm going to do is draw a marker that's a
half-inch up from this line. Because I'm working
with a pattern piece that has me center
the back on the fold, there isn't any seam
allowance here. Basically what I want to
do is line this up so that the center stops at a half inch and the out
seam stops at one inch. I'm just going to draw a line here to help me guide that up. Now I just want to
place this on here so that it's one
inch in the side and a half inch in the center. Again, if you didn't need to add any length to your pattern and you just needed
to remove length, what you would do
instead of adding paper is mark on your
pattern a half an inch. You could pivot this so that
this comes down a half inch. Now that you have that in place, let's tape it together. One thing that you might
notice though it's subtle, this line is no longer straight. What you either need
to do now is add a center back seam so
that you can cut this on two pieces of fabric
because you no longer cut this on
the fold and have this angle or what
you can do is pivoted out onto the side seam so that this becomes
straight again. In the resources, I'll link you to a guy to
show you how to move out that angle to the
side seam so you can keep your center back on fold. I hope I've prepared
you to analyze your own muslin and make some changes to
your own garments. Remember that as you're adding
length or you're pivoting, you might be changing the
shape of other areas of your garment and creating
fit problems in other spots. It's important to remember
that for any of your actions, look at what other
reactions are happening on the paper pattern
and continue to make the adjustment for
that area as well. You're going to be
making a lot of muslins, but practice makes perfect. Get practicing and
good luck. [MUSIC]
11. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] In this class
we covered a lot. We started with taking
our measurements, then we reviewed our
measurements against patterns to figure out what adjustments
we can make on the paper. Once we made those adjustments
to our paper pattern, we cut our pattern out on muslin material and
assembled it together into an easy-to-use muslin that helps us to check the fit. We looked at that fit
on our actual bodies, pinning out any excess
where we needed to take away and making note of where we needed to
add a little bit. We brought those
adjustments back to the paper and created a
paper pattern with the fixes and finishes so that
we can continue to use that pattern to either make more adjustments or make many beautiful finished
garments that fit our bodies. I hope you have
the confidence now to second-guess the pattern and figure out how you can make that size right for
your unique body. If you truly want to
sew clothes that fit, you should make
creating a muslin a part of your practice
and do it each time. It's really the
difference between having clothes
that are basically no different than off the rack to making
clothes that are bespoke, clothes tailored to
fit your unique body. As always, check out the class resources for
links and more information. I can't wait to see
your finished muslins in the project gallery, so make sure to add those. Thank you so much
for joining me for this class and happy
sewing. [MUSIC]