Learn New Things — Janet Szabo

Nicole Sauce did a podcast earlier this week about how important it is to continue to challenge ourselves to learn new things. She just acquired a spinning wheel (an Ashford Traditional). It came to her unassembled. In the process of putting it together, she learned about Scotch tension, how the flyer rotates around the bobbin, and other bits of knowledge that will help her to be a better spinner.

I taught a Bernina serger mastery class yesterday (10 am to 4 pm), took a break to get some dinner, and then attended a two-hour evening class on fixing sewing problems taught by the store’s sewing machine tech. I learned several things I didn’t know, or only knew superficially. I hope Ryan continues to offer these kinds of classes because he did a great job. And I will continue to take classes because there is still so much to learn.

In her podcast, Nicole also observed that sometimes, it helps to learn from newbies rather than experts. Experts often make assumptions when they teach. (I have to remind myself that not everyone comes to serger class knowing what a looper is.) I think about that from time to time as I work through these fitting issues, especially when I am wondering out loud on the blog. I’ll give you an example.

I ponder bust shaping in garments quite a bit because I have to. Zede Donohue said, in one of the Sewing Out Loud podcasts, that having a larger-than-average bust measurement does not automatically indicate the need for a full bust adjustment. A full bust adjustment is needed when the difference between the high bust measurement and the full bust measurement is 4” or more. A lot of patterns will recommend choosing a size based on the high bust measurement, first, before deciding if an FBA is needed.

A person could have a high bust measurement of 42” and a full bust measurement of 45” and not need an FBA. Much also depends on how the breast tissue is distributed. One of the issues I’ve run into with some patterns (especially knits) is that in order to accommodate a fuller bust, the pattern is drafted to have a wider measurement at the underarm.

Minerva, a UK fabric company, has a YouTube channel. They’ve just started a sewalong series using this pattern:

I bought this pattern last year at Esther’s Fabric Shop on Bainbridge Island in Seattle when we were there for my cousin’s wedding, so I pulled it out to take a look at it while I watched some of the Minerva videos. As I am starting to do routinely now, I compared my bodice sloper to the pattern:

This is a bit of comparing apples to oranges, admittedly, because my bodice sloper incorporates a bust dart, whereas the Knit Essentials pattern does not. If I use the Knit Essentials pattern that corresponds to my full bust measurement, though, I am going to end up with a big chunk of excess fabric right underneath my armpit. (There is negative ease built into most patterns for knit fabric, so I’d actually be using a measurement slightly smaller than my full bust measurement.) That chunk of fabric drives me batty. I need the additional width in the bodice at the level of my full bust, not 3” above it. That is one of my gripes about patterns for knit fabrics, and I think it’s why I prefer to use the boob bump method. I would rather have the underarm fit more closely and only then accommodate my bust with either an actual dart or a boob bump.

[One of the husband’s nicknames for me is Goldilocks. Other people probably don’t care about that excess fabric underneath the armpit, but I want it to fit “just right”.]

But what do I know? I have no formal education in pattern drafting. I only know what I have learned through trial and error. Even a formal education in pattern drafting might not be the answer—ask the husband some time how he feels about architects who sit in offices and design houses on computers. I come up with all these questions but I have no way to find out if I am on the right track or not except more trial and error, or when I have the great good fortune to take a sloper class from Joe Vechiarelli and he points out that I need to lengthen my bodice sloper by a couple of inches and suddenly I understand why everything is too short.

Some pattern companies, like Love Notions, include a full bust pattern piece in their patterns, where the full bust adjustment has already been done. As I mentioned in another blog post, though, FBAs come with downstream issues, one of which is that making an FBA makes the area below the FBA wider, and unless that additional width is removed, you end up with a very tent-like garment. That is exactly how I would describe the fit of the Laundry Day Tee when I use the full bust pattern piece. If I use the regular bust pattern piece and incorporate a boob bump, I like the overall fit much better.

My questions and general observations about patterns should not be construed as criticism. Pattern drafting is a series of decisions and judgment calls, and no one designer is going to make all the right decisions for every sewist. Rather, I am trying to find my way through a maze of information and synthesize it with my real-world attempts to get my me-made clothing to fit properly. And I want to be able to share what I’ve learned with my students in some way that makes sense.