SEWING PATTERN SIZE DRAMAS! ✂ It doesn’t fit me even though the measurements are correct! Why?

Watch the video below

I know the pain of picking a sewing pattern. You choose your size; you think it's all correct. And then you sew up the garment, and it doesn't fit.

It is one of the most frustrating things, and I remember this being just so confusing. You pick up a sewing pattern. You think I've got this sewing thing, pick up a pen, you look up the numbers on the back, and then you choose one. Then you sewed it all up somehow and managed to put it all together, and then you put it on, and it doesn't fit at all whatsoever.

We all, I think, did that, to begin with, and realized that these sizes have nothing to do with ready-to-wear clothing sizes. It is all part of the assumed knowledge of sewing patterns. And it's the kind of thing that can't pick up. 

They don't tell you these types of items on the sewing pattern. The sewing pattern was never used as a learn to sew tool. This is the time where you need your trusty sewing mentor to tell you all about this.

The first thing is that we need to know the difference between body and garment measurements. What is body measurement? Body measurement is when you're using your body measurement; the bust, waist, and hip are usually standard. However, this is not how big the garment will be when it's finished.

Those are the finished garment measurements. The measurement of the bust, waist, hip, for example, will be on the actual garment when it's finished. And these are two different things. So, we go by body measurements to choose our size on the back of a pattern, but the garment always ends up usually bigger.

And this is because of a thing called ease. Ease is the amount of room a garment allows the wearer beyond the measurements of their body. There are two types of ease, fitting ease, and design ease. 

Fit ease is the amount of ease included in your dress that makes the dress wearable (and allows you to breathe!). 

Design ease is any extra space purposely added to a garment by the designer to achieve a particular look or style.

These are the things you always need to remember when deciding how much should be on your garment.

So now, how do we use this to choose a better sewing pattern size for us? It would help if you took control of your sewing, and having this knowledge and understanding even at a deeper level will allow you to choose what you want.

You can check your pattern, and if you're fortunate, you might see that they have the finished garment measurements you need.

So how do we use this information to guess? Get a dress, a top, or whatever it is, something in your wardrobe that fits you similar to how you would like it to work. It should be very similar in design, measure the actual garment, and then see how much is there.

And you can start deciding on how big you want it to be. You might decide that you only want to add two inches of ease for this particular garment. And that's when you can maybe even choose them a size down, and you'll know that it's going to fit you. And remember that this doesn't guarantee that the pattern is going to fit you. There's a difference between size and fit.

When you get to this stage and start looking at body measurements and ease, there are more levels on top of this that you go through. You start measuring the actual patterns themselves, the pattern pieces, and adding them together to determine the finished garment measurements for yourself. And you can take control of starting to make adjustments to the pattern according to your body size.

And you keep layering on these skills and going up to different levels, and you get better and better and better at fitting different sizes. And then you start to realize this is only at just a starting size, a starting point. You meant to make adjustments from here to fit you well. And that's where it gets fun in sewing. And I think where you get the best results.

Until next time...

Evelyn xx