Does Size Matter?

Picking which size to use on a sewing pattern is a little like playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey. Without being able to see very well, you stab at something over and over with a pin, praying you get it right in the end. (Ha! Ha! Small joke.)

I gave up expecting a pattern to fit straight from the envelope years ago. Take in, let out (usually the latter), it's all in a day's sewing now. But which do you start with - a pattern that's too big or too small? Do you pick by high bust, full bust or the biggest body measurement?

There are as many theories for picking the proper pattern size as there are sewing gurus. If it was as simple as following the pattern's size chart, we wouldn't have this controversy. 

My favorite (and the most accurate for me) is Nancy Zieman's method when using a Big 4 pattern (Vogue, Butterick, McCall's, Simplicity), outlined in her book, Fitting Finesse. For upper torso garments (shirt, jacket, coat), Nancy Z uses the cross chest measurement, from underarm crease to underarm crease. Her baseline is 14" = Size 14. With every half inch difference, the size correspondingly goes up or down. Like this:

12-1/2" = Size 8
13" = Size 10
13-1/2" = Size 12
14" = Size 14
14-1/2" = Size 16
15" = Size 18

As I said earlier, I like this method to pick a pattern size. It eliminates measurement distortions caused by narrow or wide backs. 

This past Saturday, I taught a t-shirt fitting class to members of my sewing guild. I asked my students to take a leap of faith and pick their pattern size a la Nancy Zieman.

Convincing a busty woman to go down a pattern size or two is no mean feat! They know the center front of the larger pattern strains across center front, so no way would a smaller pattern ever fit!

And they're right. It won't.

How could it? Their full bust measurement is larger than the pattern's. To make it work, more room must be added via a full bust adjustment. Sometimes a broad back alteration is needed, too.

This raises an important question. If you have to add to a pattern to make it fit, why not start with a bigger pattern in the first place? 

The answer can be found in the neckline and upper chest. A bigger pattern has a fuller upper chest. This results in gaping necklines and fabric bubbles above the high bust caused by too much material. Using a smaller pattern reduces the amount of fabric this area, letting the cloth rest closer to the body. Extra fabric is added where it is needed - the bust and sometimes the back.

Enlarging the middle of the torso is easier than shrinking the upper chest. (Reducing the collar and its seam can be a knuckle gnawing experience.) With the smaller pattern, the garment fits in the shoulder area - important when the garment hangs from the shoulders.

Is this method foolproof? Of course not. What in life is? Tweaking is needed. Sometimes lots of tweaking.

But I think it's a darn good place to start . 

How do you pick your pattern size?

                    - Lady T

Thumb Flick Knitting

I'm a tri-lingual knitter! I can knit English (right hand holds the working yarn), German (left hand holds working yarn) and now Portuguese (yarn worn around neck and stitches are made with a flick of the left thumb).

Granny T taught me English style knitting as a child. She wanted me to knit a million little squares to sew into a doll blanket. I never got past one blue square and one pink square. It was so hard (Do I go right to left or vice versa? How come I have more/less stitches than last time? My needles fell out - again!) yet so boring (Let's undo that row, dear, you made some mistakes....) that my knitting hobby lasted only as long as my grandmother's visit. 

I picked it up again when I was 20. I started a scarf for my then boyfriend but the knitting curse befell me. Before I was finished, he was my boyfriend no more. The next two gentlemen in the boyfriend lineup thought they should get it, or better yet, have one made especially for them. The thought of having to knit 3 fine wool scarves was enough to make me throw away my needles. 

<Cue the sound of a ticking clock> Thirty-five years went by. I found out I was going to be a grandmother.... In my joy, I decided to knit a baby blanket. My friend, B.A.D. (I get such a kick out of her initials - irony at its best), showed me how to knit English style and then for fun, she taught me to knit in the German/Continental style. 

I loved the Continental style. Even though my stitch tension wasn't as even as when I knitted English style, making the knit stitch was fast and easy. The purl stitch, however, was a different story. It was awkward and slow. I gravitated to things featuring the garter stitch or knit in the round.

Two years later, realizing I had to get over my stumbling block, I decided to make a sweater requiring the purl stitch. 

With the oodles of practice, I did get faster, and "picking" the stitch was less awkward. But my stitch tension fluctuated like the temperature on a maritime spring day.

I'm a huge fan of Sally Melville's how-to series, The Knitting Experience.  In her second book, The Purl Stitch, she outlines how to purl with the yarn around the neck, taught to her as Portuguese knitting. Intriguing. 

I ran across another reference to knitting with the yarn around the neck in Maggie Righetti's book, Knitting in Plain English, only she called it Arabic knitting. (Like all styles of knitting, naming it from a geographic location is awkward because more than one nation uses it.) 

Thoroughly intrigued and more than a little frustrated with my purl stitch, I googled "Portuguese style knitting".

Isn't the internet a marvelous thing! From several YouTube videos, I was able to get the gist of it. The working yarn goes around the neck, and stitches are made with the left thumb. I tried it. It was love at first flick. 

Helpful as they were, the YouTube videos weren't quite enough; I need more information. Then I realized one presenter, Andrea Wong, had made some commercial dvds on Portuguese style knitting. Fortunately, the local public library owned them, so I swooped in and picked them up. 

Wow! Oh wow! Thumb flicking knitting is fab-u-lous!

And the Winner is....

Final episode of The Great British Sewing Bee. What fabulous challenges! And the winner is....

Find out here:
Episode 4 - The Finals

Episode 3

Did you enjoy the first two episodes of The Great British Sewing Bee? The third one is up. Here's the link:

Episode 3, The Great British Sewing Bee

As with the first two, I loved this episode. What the contestants did is amazing. There was one thing that disappointed - I think they helped one person too much. She's a sweetie and I can see why everyone wants her to do well, but it did smack of favoritism. Perhaps everyone got that kind of attention but if so, it sure doesn't show in the editing.

Sewing Shows

As you've probably guessed, I love all things sewing. This extends past the sewing room and permeates just about every aspect of my life, including television/YouTube watching.

I enjoy Project Runway. Notice I didn't say I love PR.  American tv seems to think conflict=interest to the point of artificially "enhancing" conflict if the real stuff is absent. The "personal conflict" in PR is my least favorite part of the show and I wish the producers would remove every scrap of it. It's boring and takes away from the real conflict - taming the chosen pieces of fabric and forcing them to conform to the designers' visions. 

Anyone who sews knows the struggle of bringing your vision to life. Although fabric is supposed to be inanimate, it often seems to have a mind of its own. And the fight for dominance between a commercial sewing pattern and an actual body is not for the faint of heart.

I was thrilled to catch the rumblings of a new sewing show, The Great British Sewing Bee, on some sewing blogs and hastened to find the links. 

Hurray! something new that isn't a clone of PR, like the short-lived Project Runway Canada. 

While PR's focus is to find the best designer, the Sewing Bee's aim is to find the best home sewer. (Personally, I find sewing and designing go hand in hand, so the distinction isn't as black and white as it sounds. But that's a topic for another day.) I especially like that the contestants sew 3 garments/challenges before the judges decide who to eliminate. It seems fairer that way. One horrible garment isn't going to knock you out.

If I've piqued your interest, you can follow these links to the YouTube posts for episodes 1 and 2.

Episode 1

Episode 2

Happy viewing!

              -  Lady T

Dithering

After this past week, it's easy to see why I disappear from the blog world. The projects I've been working on have had serious glitches and I've been dithering about what to do with them. Let me give you a recent example.

Last Friday was my birthday. As Birthday Queen, I claimed the right to sew for me on my day. As I was knee deep in other things (like pattern drafting), I wanted a short, simple project. 

Silhouette Patterns #600, the basic blouse, has been in my queue for awhile. Peggy Sagers has several podcasts featuring this blouse. Have you seen her podcasts? They're great. I've learned so much from them. I'm a big fan of Peggy's.

Alas, the first basic blouse podcast, the one where Peggy demonstrates how to fit this pattern, is currently unavailable. Their broadcast technology has changed and this old one must be giving them problems. I hope it comes back, or they redo it, because it was great.

In a more recent podcast, Peggy constructs this blouse, including cutting it out, in an hour. And she isn't even rushed. When the session ended, all she had left to do were the hems and buttonholes/buttons. 

I really, really wanted to love this blouse. I knew that once I tweaked the fit, the whole series of shirt/blouse patterns would open up to me as Peggy uses the same basic block for them all. 

But this pattern is so homely on me. The neck does not come anywhere close to my neckline, it goes halfway up my throat. The garment doesn't skim my body - it hangs from me in a way that waist darts could never cure. The armscye is too low, and the sleeves seriously restrict my arm movement. 

I could adjust this pattern but would be more than tweaking. And the style of the basic blouse isn't appealing enough for me to want to put in the time. As a zippity-quick top, it was fine. For extended fitting work, not so much. 

Other patterns fit me better, with less work. As much as I admire the Silhouette philosophy, I don't seem to fit their body type. I wanted to love it. Dang.

Internet Angel

An internet angel visited me, via email. Lori A. Knowles, author of The Practical Guide to Patternmaking for Fashion Designers: Menswear (known on this blog as Patternmaking: Menswear) sent me a long email with encouragement and some numbers to help me with my draft. The armscye is now in a wearable position. Thanks, Lori!