Patterns and Fitting

A pattern is a set of instructions for a body that does not exist. The measurements printed on the envelope belong to an average nobody quite matches, and the gap between that average and the person standing in your sewing room is where most homemade clothing goes wrong. This course closes that gap. You will learn to read a pattern envelope the way a builder reads a plan - the ease built into the design, the yardage tables, the notions list, the suggested fabrics and why they are suggested - and to read the tissue itself: grainlines, notches, darts, dots, lengthen-and-shorten lines, seam allowances, and the small printed marks that tell you what the drafter intended.

Then the real work begins. You will learn to take accurate measurements on a living person, with the tape level and snug and the subject standing naturally, and to choose your size from those numbers rather than from what a store label once told you. You will lay out and cut on grain, transfer your markings faithfully, and then sew a muslin - a plain test garment that costs a few dollars and saves whole yards of good cloth. From the muslin you will make the adjustments that matter most: lengthening and shortening the bodice and skirt, letting out or taking in at waist and hip, the full and small bust adjustment done properly through the dart rather than by guesswork at the side seam, narrow and sloping shoulders, broad and rounded backs, and the trouser alterations - crotch depth and length, thigh and seat - that defeat more sewers than any other. The last unit turns to PDF patterns and the large body of free patterns available online: printing and taping at true scale, checking the test square, and judging whether a free pattern is worth your fabric.

The course is ten units of ten lessons - one hundred lessons in all - self-paced, each lesson a short reading followed by a ten-question quiz that grades itself. It is written for adults, and for a particular kind of adult: the parent sewing on a tight budget, the person who is tired of clothes that almost fit, the beginner who has finished a first project and wants to know why the shoulder pulls. It assumes you are intelligent, busy, and capable of learning something exacting. Throughout, it keeps company with the Scriptures that speak to this work - Bezalel and Aholiab filled with the Spirit in all manner of workmanship, the women of Exodus 35 who did spin with their hands, the virtuous woman who layeth her hands to the spindle and maketh fine linen, Dorcas and the coats and garments she made for people who missed her when she was gone. Careful measuring is honesty; a muslin is patience; fitting a garment to the real person in front of you is love of neighbor with a tape measure in hand. Where a lesson touches on clothing the body, modesty is taught warmly and as a positive good - a kindness to others and a quiet adornment - never as a rule list and never as a rebuke. The standing instruction is Colossians 3:23: whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord.