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Lesson Info

Fit and Alter the Skirt

And pinning at the center back so the red look the inch line is at the bottom of the elastic same thing here inch lines at the bottom of the elastic but look what's happening with a lot of swing and in this case on the dark closest to the side seam actually does go to a point it's called the hit bone so this start can work but this start is going into nothing and just making a bubble so we're gonna undo that one which allows this to come a little further over at the front and it's coming to the centre back but it's still swinging this is what's known as thighs in the fullness of down here so we need to make sure there's enough room to get from center front to centre back at the fullest part of the thigh it's actually below the hip so let out the side scene because it does come to the centre at the waste I'm not going to change the pin at the top okay, we still need a little more liquor on the very edge need I add some tissue and what we're going to do is pull this up so doesn't swing a...

nymore because we have the distance we need to get from center front centre back we just don't need all this length right here she's well flat in the tummy that makes sense at the elastic across the back and darts in the back look good turn so they can see your back it's not swinging in the back it's hanging straight all of that's perfect so we just need to add to the side seam so let's do that way this's what we call at a chuck these long strips speaking three branches marker waist you want me to get a lighter that pin yeah and the reason we add a chunk is its pattern piece curves you can see that how much there's about three inches at the top here that's curved away so it's easiest to add a piece of tissue straight so it might be that we're adding just an inch they're in order to fit here so it's easier to add a straight piece than adding little curved bit so that's why we just call it at a chunk all this taping and I haven't even made a dent in that role so your skirt were adding just to the side seam so more with you know some lines back here on the pattern back pattern piece and that's for somebody with a very, very flat barrier which we did not find in this group and it doesn't matter it doesn't show up this much in skirts but when we fit pants if you have a flat barrier your pants are too wide and baggy in the back, so we almost always takes something or a lot out of the bath of pants just shows that more in pants, and it doesn't skirts. But if somebody's, um, side scene was way far forward because they had a really flat back in skirts, we would actually take that tuck out of the back, which would bring the side seam into a better position. But it just doesn't usually show it's much and skirt so it's. Not something that we do every time, even though that same person we might do that in pants, I'm very, very flat in the back. So is my grandmother. So was my mother. So is my sister. It just runs in the family way get mother daughter is coming to the workshop and it's, just like you're fit one and just just fitting the other who has got neither a little wider or gravity has taken the toll, but is in that there just the same with you? We'll see how I guess, I guess pin and then it's. I like having the pins there, so if I need to rearrange them, I just have to grab them out. But, um, generally it's not too far off tomorrow used to drive me crazy, especially in the pant classes teach if students would add this big white of a chunk to the back and this white to the front and then they didn't get trimmed evenly. I'm always standing there trying to match up the original cut line because I've got to any even pieces and it just takes so much time to fit so this kind of things do have a teacher's preference but I think it would help the student to and marta what was the the adjustment that you just added to? I just added a little more with at the thigh she just let him out evenly front and back at the thigh side seams so is this the last take? It feels good at your waist right here yeah so she's will turn her to the side but her back waist position is much higher than the front and that's. Okay waistlines do not have to be parallel to the floor they really are where your waist like if you were wearing pants or something where the waistband wants to be and where it's comfortable your waist is either the top here hit bone or where you band and the bottom of the elastic would be put in that spot but if you want your waist lower and it's comfortable that's fine we always tell a student put the elastic where you feel comfortable with the waistband besides thing seems to be pretty much right at the side just look like it's swinging forward or anything and see the centre back just great shape so now I just want them to see from the other side you can see from there you can see the raise your arms can you see the elastic is higher here and lower in the front and so but that's okay that's just the way it's going to sit that way seamus will fit to that and the other comment that I would make is before martin marks the stitching line is I've always had you have a small waist and thighs now we just have a big waist entice but eh an a line skirt was always much more comfortable for me because the guys just have a bold right there and it makes a little harder to make a straight skirt look nice so that's something to consider often times when you have ah when the waist is lower in the front like this especially if it's more than an inch and you buy ready made pants the front waste rolls down her side back area were right on the elastic but at this point here it starts the elastic starts coming down it's like turns a vacancy more and she's a little wavy also she dips a little more right with dart used to be and she comes up a little bit more both of the sites and the center front that's typical fine and I'm just gonna do another trick here see if the left is the same as the right and it is pretty much so you're even turning around so they could see the tissue that way too she just untended in flipped it's to the other side left the pins in the hips okay, you look pretty much the same on both sides a lot of people are not but this is a great trick and telling before you cut out your fabric um a lot of skirts I don't know why they do this but they dio um it's mostly skirts that air gord and it's like there's a skirt piece for here and a skirt piece for here and then you you have to cut four of these or whatever but any right they only give you a fourth of the skirt that's right so front in the back are the same pattern piece and so but what I do when I have that type of situation has put the elastic around. I pin the the first quarter of the skirt and then I un pin that and go to the centre back. So I pin the second quarter of the skirt and that works but it's frustrating because front waste isn't the same as the back waist, but yet they just give you one pattern base or maybe two you might get these two pieces and this might be cut on the old so it's, you never know what you're gonna get when you open up an envelope. Thank you both for patty and marta for getting us through four different bodies for the same pattern and really taking it from not now, you know, from figure out the right side is too what you see is what you get to get in that perfect fit. It's really, really great. I'm wondering if you all here in the audience have any questions about what we've gone through with this one pattern or any sort of things that were unexpected, that you learned about your own body and fit relative to what we've done today. So my question is so once we do this dress and we have kind of are basics is there are there any shortcuts are there? Or do we do this with every single pattern that we have? And what is one shortcut? Take the pattern you've already altered and sewed up once and sew it up again on still tissue till it's still fabric fit, but you could start with the tissue? Yeah, that's a great shortcut make it more than once, yeah, okay, really on ly short short cut you could do alteration wise is if you have the high round and low round and that's it because it was their posture based. Anything else is circumference based, and it depends on the ease in the garment. In, um, sizing. If the pattern starts with a size six and goes to a size ten or twelve it's usually five sizes in the envelope, so you actually learn grading, by the way they're done. There's a one inch circumference difference in sizing between a six and an eight one inch difference in size between eight and ten, but there's an inch and a half difference between ten and twelve, then a two inch difference between twelve and fourteen, fourteen and sixteen, sixteen and eighteen. So the larger sizes have a larger grade than the smaller sizes. Which makes sense, however, when it comes to ease. If a pattern is designed with five inches of these it's, five inches of these, whether it's a six or a twenty six, so the e's factor is identical and depending on the style and the fabric, six inches of these in a size six might be too much fabric. And if the pattern only has three inches of these three inches of these in a size twenty six, might not be enough fabric. And this is where we could mention finished garment measurements, because if you have the finished measurement of let's see you buying just screw pattern and you have finish measurement of the hip then you can say well, my hips are thirty four and this has um maybe the pleated traveler skirt and has eight inches of these and I'm uh smaller and I don't want that much cheese where you could actually go in buy a smaller size if you could calculate that with with some experiences they took the finished garment measurements off the pattern envelopes for a while and the new president mccall's has said we want them back on because the consumers said they wanted the finnish carmen measurements so they're on not all that they're on most envelopes now but they're generally printed on the tissue out thie hip line it'll give you the finnish government measurements and if you look at that before you turn the pattern you to make a decision too and it'll give that to you at the best area as well. So once you're you understand yourself a little bit better I mean in general small people and really large people don't like a lot of these because small people are just, you know, overwhelmed by it and large people that just makes him look larger and that's just serve a generality so for instance in this pattern on the back of the envelope it says measurement at bus line he's a finished garment measurements with it lower edge and back length back like members the when you don't pay attention to so this particular pattern which is for a t shirt just has one inch of these it's fun it's only this pattern which is a unisex anytime there's a guy on the envelope it's for both of you and generally that means it's got a little bit broader shoulder for women than for men and generally it means it's kind of looser and fit so for this one finished measurement on that one all the finish me but there's a small medium and large which is another story the large measures forty two forty four forty two, forty four they don't have the finnish measurement on here. Yeah, now that's one that they before they came back with this one should have finished. Yeah. Okay, so this does have finished and the large is for forty four and measures eight at forty eight and a half. That means there's four and a half inches of these in this one chest dusty's? Yeah, yeah, and we found that this one is sized for men so dexter doesn't have the women smaller sizes in it which frustrated me. The small is for size fourteen fits very nicely I like it, but I'm a fourteen and they were sizing him for women's sizes so you could get eight or whatever, but somebody decided that why aren't we using men's sizes and solves an hour? You two sexual patterns were dead men's sizes it shocked us because somebody this ten cannot use that pattern unless they know how to grate down but the other thing about large and extra large small medium large and extra large there's always a range of sizes so it's a small is an eight ten you actually get a tan in the envelope there is no eight and if it's a twelve fourteen you actually for medium that's actually a fourteen and you just need to know that so if you were a twelve and the pattern is twelve fourteen and the fourteen has four inches of these twelve has six inches of these so it just those little factors just are things you have to think about and work with and that's why fitting the tissue really helps because it gives you an idea of how much cheese is in the pattern number one but number to one of the best things you get out of fitting the tissue is how the pattern goes together come on. This is a real simple front back but when you have a complex pattern you have to figure out how all the parts go together so it really helps um a teacher I get asked this question a lot everyone wants a shortcut right? Can't I just take my fitted bodice and lay it over a pattern and make my determination from that when I have to do when we were designing for the fit pattern for vogue the head merchandisers she just please show them how to do that please, I want that in the pattern and we just said sorry and and I've seen articles in prominent sewing magazines that show how to do that and it doesn't work camp doesn't work okay, because styles are different sleeve I'm hold I guess that just sells magazines then yeah that's why? I sort of stopped taking one of those magazines yeah, and in truly, if you just get you're right size and sort of learn how your body varies from a fitted design like this, then you know what to look for in any size and again remember what you see is what you get, so stand in front of the mirror with your tissue on and look for those things that you know you may have to do if you don't see it the issue, then you don't do it and it might be just because of the easier the cut remember that pattern industry the big four we call them a calls, vogue rhetoric and simplicity are standard, so they fit the same. If you alter one, you're going to alter the next one pretty much the same way and quick so is not that far off and it used to be stretched, and so I did the same alteration in the stretch and so that I do in a mccall's or a vogue, so it may not be exactly the same amount. But I know if I have to do a full bus to do a full bus in anything, if I have to do a high round, I have to do the high round and low around. I just do them. I don't even measure, I just do it. So once you have what we used to say is once you've offered three patterns and you see a pattern in your alterations, then that's what your alterations are going to be, I'm square and forward and that it's not going to change anything else, so I just do that automatically, but if I then tried it on after after that, it wasn't right I would change it, but rarely do I have to change it. So that's, the shortcut, I guess. Thank you both so much we are now going, teo, move on to our fashion pattern, right? Great.