Tag: size charts

Seventies Style, and Size Charts.

1970s print tunic dress

I think this one might even be my favourite tunic so far.

It’s made from a brand spanking new thirty-five year old bed sheet. Check out the fabulous 1970s print!

In the interests of encouraging you all to buy a lovely tunic dress or top… I’ve now put together a size chart. It runs from UK size 2 (bust 29½”) to UK size 30 (bust 54″). If you fall outside of that range, fear not! I can still make a dress or top for you. All I need to know are your bust and hip measurements, and I can draw up a pattern in your size.

Complex Curves.

So far I have made a grand total of seven and a half corsets. Two for me, four for friends, and one which is still under construction. The first one I made from a commercial sewing pattern, and it was such a ridiculous shape (even for a ridiculously-shaped garment like a corset) that I decided that drafting my own patterns was the best way forward. This plan was also borne out of two abdominal operations and an ongoing stomach-ache, which means that I don’t like to be squished too much around the middle.

Now I appreciate that seven and a half corsets doesn’t make my anything even faintly resembling an expert! But eleven years as a dressmaker, plus a year of fitting bridalwear, does give me some sort of clue as to the range of shapes and sizes in which the female form can manifest itself.

Here is a work-in-progress picture of the corset that I’m making at the moment:

Rhona's corset - in progress

You will notice that it has peaks and troughs, where it doesn’t lie flat on the table.

This is because (shock, horror) people aren’t flat.

I frequent a number of online communities for corset wearers and corset makers, and time after time I see pictures of completed corsets, often beautifully made, lying completely flat on a table.

Of course, the primary function of a corset is to reduce the size of the wearer’s waist. The best way to make this reduction very apparent is to do this by taking all of the reduction out of the side seams of the corset. This results in an extremely dramatic silhouette, and a very flat corset.

The trouble is, once again, people aren’t flat. They don’t squish only at the sides. My back, for example, has an exaggerated curve. If I were to wear a corset where the sides had been reduced but the back was straight, there’s no way it would be comfortable for me to wear. I also have a rounded stomach, so I need to make allowances for that in the shape of my corset, even if the intention is to make it appear as flat as possible.

My eight-panel underbust corsets are about the simplest style it’s possible to make whilst still taking into account the curves of the wearer. If I wanted to go for a much more precise fit, taking into account the shape of the wearer’s ribcage, or the curvature of their spine, I’d probably be looking at doubling the number of panels, in order to accommodate the complex curves.

(Complex curves is also the reason I don’t take orders for overbust corsets, by the way!)

 

Of course, the principle that people aren’t flat doesn’t apply only to corsets.

Kathleen at Fashion Incubator, for example, has two extremely interesting articles which explain why your trousers don’t fit.

And because most “industry standard” (as if there were any such thing) clothing is made to fit a B-cup, a great many of my customers are either women with larger breasts, or smaller women with curves they’re not “supposed” to have. Oh, and plus size women who don’t have shoulders like a weightlifter, which is what a great deal of clothing apparently expects from them.

 

When I become a Proper Fashion Designer (stop laughing at the back!), I can assure you that my clothes will be designed for, and modelled by, a whole range of different shapes and sizes of woman.

Believe me, this is going to be much, much more difficult than buying a set of slopers or a grading scale or some pre-set CAD software. If I use those, my clothes will come out the same shapes and sizes as the ones you see in the shops. And that rather defeats the object of making clothing from scratch in the first place.

Apparently I’ve never been one for doing things the easy way…

The ridiculous fiction of size charts.

Today my plan was to draft some paper patterns for three or four different styles of skirt that I’ve been thinking about for a little while. I know the average sizes of myself, my friends and family, and my repeat customers, but I thought I’d better do a little bit of research and find out what sizes other people were using for their clothes.

I’m making skirts, so I’ve focussed entirely on waist and hip measurements here.

The sizes shown below are all taken from the charts on the stores’ websites. All of the measurements given are for a UK size 14. They’re in centimetres.

Shop Waist Hips
M&S 79 104
Evans 80 101
Top Shop 79.2 101.5
Dorothy Perkins 78 101.5
John Lewis 77 102.5
Next 76 100.5
Miss Selfridge 79 101.5
Principles 78 101.5
Debenhams 76-80 99-103
British Home Stores 78 103
New Look 81 104
Monsoon 76.5 102
River Island 77 102
Wallis 78.5 104
H&M 76 100
Oasis 77 104
French Connection (FCUK) 79 104
Kew 79 104
Karen Millen 78 104
Hobbs 81 106
Jigsaw 79 104
Coast 80 105
Warehouse 79 102

These are the measurements from two of the industry standard pattern cutting books, from which students learn to draft their clothing patterns.

Fabric, Form and Flat Pattern Cutting, 2nd Edition (1996/2007)
Size   10 12 14 16 18 20 22    
Waist   62 67 72 77 82 87 92    
Hips   87 92 97 102 107 112 117    
Metric Pattern Cutting, 4th Edition (revised 1997)
Size 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26
Waist 62 66 70 74 78 82 86 92 98 104
Hips 68 90 94 98 102 106 110 116 122 128

In the first set of measurements, there is a 25cm difference between the waist and hip measurements, and an average of 5 cm between each size.

In the second set, there is a 24cm difference between the waist and hip measurements, and 4 cm difference between each size, but the measurements given for each size are now larger. A person who would have worn a size 10 in the first set of measurements would now be wearing a size 8.

Despite this, the most recent measurements given in the pattern cutting books for a size 14 are still at least one size smaller than those given in the stores. Having said that, the charts in the pattern book are eleven years old. I know that the 5th edition of Metric Pattern Cutting is due out very soon, so it’s possible that the measurements given for each size may now be more in line with those shown by the stores.

But if the clothing that’s in the stores isn’t the same size as the measurements on the size charts, how can anybody possibly know what size to choose?

According to the pattern cutting books, I’m a size 18-20. Looking at the stores’ size charts shown above, a size 14 should be much too small for me. However, I know from experience that I can usually fit comfortably into a size 14 from any of those shops. In a commercial dress pattern, I sew anything between a size 12 and a size 20, depending on the style of the garment and the amount of design ease that has been allowed.

So, the answer would seem to be to provide exact measurements for each garment that I make – and in fact I will make my own size chart on that principle. But this does assume that people know what size they are, and most people simply don’t.

For example, if I was to buy a size 14 skirt from one of the shops listed above, I should theoretically be able to assume that my waist measurement falls into the range 76-81 cm. Even though this is a pretty large size range for a single garment, in fact my actual waist measurement is much larger. Then there’s the added complication that modern skirts and trousers are cut to fit far lower on the body than the natural waist, which means that the waist sizes given on the charts bears absolutely no relation to the measurements of the actual garment.

As a dressmaker I have a house full of tape measures, and I measure myself on a regular basis so that I can work out which size to choose for my next creation. It’s easy for me to forget that this is not normal for most people!

Perhaps I should offer a handy measuring pack, with a tape measure and a little chart showing where to take the measurements. Once people knew their actual dimensions, then they could more confidently choose the right size of garment according to my chart.

This is quite important, as all of my clothes are made by hand from limited stocks of fabric. If somebody buys a garment and finds that it doesn’t fit, I’ll willingly exchange it, but I can make no guarantees that I’ll have enough fabric left to make another one exactly the same.

Given that I’m planning to offer a new range of clothing in multiple sizes, I need to have a set of basic patterns that I can use over and over again. (The cost of drafting a new pattern for each individual customer is rather prohibitive.) Having a standard range of sizes definitely makes this much easier from a manufacturing point of view. The difficult part is going to be to come up with a range of sizes which genuinely reflect the actual dimensions of the garment, and will fit as many people as possible.

Wish me luck!