#pattern grading

The easiest way to enlarge these patterns is to use inch-grid paper, which in the US and UK isn’t that hard to find, but if you live in Europe, is near impossible to source unless you pay import taxes. For paper with lines on it.

BUT!

I’ve found a Dutch stationery supplier, 123inkt.nl, who makes flip charts with a 2.5cm grid!! The grid is just a smidge under an inch (1” = 2.54cm), but considering you’ll need to adapt the patterns to your body size anyway, that’s not too big of a loss.

I’m so excited to get to use these books without first spending an hour drawing my own grid, which is inevitably crooked, or gauging pattern proportions by eye because I can’t be bothered to draw a full grid.

How to grade a sewing pattern

Grading up or down from a single size.

There's sort of two things you have to do.

The first is to figure out the total wearing and style ease in the pattern. Ease, in terms of sewing, is the difference between the body measurements that the piece was designed for, and the actual measurement of the piece. You usually have a few inches of ease in the bust of a garment, for example, to give the body room to expand when the wearer takes a breath.

Almost all patterns I've encountered have the body reference size somewhere on them.

It looks like this in the specific issues of Otome no Sewing that I have.

And the chart in question is up in the top right corner.

You can find the size of the size of the garment by laying the pieces out and then measuring the pattern piece.

If you're grading up (making a smaller pattern larger) then you know that the total ease of the original pattern is your minimum. If there's a 6" difference between the model size and the dress size, then you know that your piece will have, at minimum, 6" of ease there.

If you have multi-sizes, you can see what the ease is of each size. If it has 2" of ease in a small, 3" of ease in the medium, and 4" in the large, then you can sort of guess that you'd want 5-6" of ease in the XL size you're grading into.

The other half is less tangible.

How do you know if 6" will be enough? This is where experience and mockups meets plain ol' guessing. There's not a solid rule about how to add or change style ease. You can guess, you can hold up your tape measure and stare at it for a while, you can make mockups in multiple sizes, you can borrow your friend who is about the same size and measure their arms, but there's not a specific hard rule about how much style ease you want to keep.

Fashion Pattern Making System is one of the easiest to come to terms with. You do not need to have any previous sewing knowledge to understand how to create new designs. You can follow some golden rules to make your pattern system. Are the rules too hard for you to follow? Don't worry; there are ways to make this even easier. We will see that in this blog.

Three main things are needed for this to happen: the two curves and the Golden Rule. Are you wondering what they are? The first two are interesting tools used to make your designing job easier. One is known as the Tailor's Curve, and the other is known as the Designer's Curve. The Rule refers to the most widely used drafting in fashion designing, the Lutterloh.

Lutterloh

This fashion pattern drafting system was first developed in Germany in the early 1930s. It was especially required for people who were not professional but home sewers. Lutterloh is still the most favorite among other systems because it does not expect the home sewer to design from scratch. Instead, what you get is a book to which you can refer for pattern piece diagrams.

These patterns differ with your choice of garment. The book sheds some helpful light in this respect. This book is very famously titled The Golden Rule. The family-owned company that developed the Lutterloh system is still in business today. It shows how popular this drafting system is.

Curves

These rulers are the two most essential tools required if you want to cut your design patterns. If you want a perfect measurement of the different curves, you should use 400 the Tailor's Curve. Whether it is coats, jackets, or suit sleeves, this ruler is the perfect tool. If you are a perfectionist, you should go after these rulers as they are some of the most accurate tailoring instruments available.

How To Make Clothes that Fit and Flatter by Adele P. Margolis

Margolis wrote some half dozen books on sewing and patterns and this one from 1969 focuses on fit, how patterns should fit, and what patterns are good for fitting what kinds of bodies. I have given you some of the really fun 1969 fashions with the top photo of the evening outfits, but the book is largely a set of detailed lessons on how to fit sewing patterns to bodies of all sizes. This is where I learned to grade patterns, that is, to change them from one size to another.

Margolis features all these hip fashions in order to teach you about fitting. As in, make sure that the darts which feet the pattern to the body do no disturb the fabric--see the flower cut up the wrong way by a dart on the left and left undisturbed on the right. Ditto for the check pattern on the blouse. Margolis teaches you to move darts wherever they work best in this lesson. She also tells to to not bother messing with certain kinds of patterns in certain kinds of ways because the results will not work. So in addition to teaching grading, and fitting, she is also giving lessons on the relationship between design and fit. 

)

(The process of making a pattern bigger or smaller is called grading, and it’s one of my favorite things to do, actually. It’s a really good job skill to have if you’re looking to get into fashion patterning, costume design and tech, or working for a small studio. Just throwing that out there. It’s a real skill, and it’s somewhat complex, but once you get good at it, definitely put it on your resume! And yes, you can make almost any pattern into almost any size!)

According to Simplicity’s questionably helpful technical drawings, it looks like the bodices of those pieces are princess seamed.Who’s up for 20dollarlolita attempts to teach an entire 10-week term of pattern grading in one ask using MSPaint and a trackpad that breaks when you try to click-and-drag? That’s what we’re about to attempt:

So here we have the back of the only princess-seamed pattern that I already have on my computer. Yours will be a little different in the piece on the top, since the JSK doesn’t have an armhole, but the process is the same.

I suggest tracing your pattern pieces onto a sturdier piece of paper. You’re going to be drawing all over them, so having clear lines is nice. Since you’re making the paper bigger, make sure to leave a border of several inches around the edges of each piece.

You’re going to want to hold your pieces close together, match notches and measure where the biggest part of the bustline is. Since you have that border around your pattern pieces, you might need to get creative with the folding of the edges. I think it really helps visualization to get all four pieces of the bodice(half) lined up, so imagine this picture, but with the side front and front pieces lined up too.

Draw a line across all four pieces at the bustline Measure how big your waist and bust pieces on the pattern are (red lines) and write it down. I like to find the under-bust (teal line) too. This is usually 3-4″ lower than the bust point. It may be more or less for you. Just measure from your bust point (that means nipple, but the word nipple makes me uncomfortable to say) to your bra band or underwire on one of your busts, and mark in that spot. You don’t need to worry about industry conventions here, because you’re sewing for you.

Now measure your bust, waist, and underbust, and write it down next to the measurements from the pattern. Subtract the pattern measurements from your measurements to figure out the difference between each. Write those numbers down and circle them. Then, since you’re working with four pattern pieces, divide that number by four. Write these numbers down and double circle them or put them in a box.

For example, the bust on a Simplicity size 20 is 40″, and the bust on a size 26 is 48″. 8″ / 4 is 2″, so each piece of the pattern needs to be 2″ bigger at the bust line. 

This was the part that blew my mind the first time I did a pattern: you just mark out the distances on the pattern piece. I had assumed there was a formula and a secret and everything, but you just draw the new distances out.

One tip: It’s a lot easier to redraw a straight line than a curved line, so I’d probably add 1/2″ onto the curved pieces, and make up the difference by adding 1+1/2″ onto the side, back, and front seams.

Then you just connect the dots. If they look very choppy, you can smooth them a little bit. It doesn’t hurt anything when you do that.

Keep drawing things bigger and connecting dots as you go. If your armhole’s bigger, you draw it bigger on both pieces. (the gray line is me aproxxing in what the sleeveless pattern is more likely to look. Should have done that 4 pictures ago, but oh well).

Seam allowance all around the outside, and you can cut out your patterns. Then you’re going to want to get some muslin (or any cheap woven fabric. Check walmart’s 50cents a yard bin when they have it) and make a mock up. This is especially important for the bodice, which can be a bit tricky due to all the curves. Adjust your mockup as you need to (good tutorial here) and you should be able to get a better fit.