What Dress Form Should You Use To Fit Your Garments?

Dress Forms

Sewing Friends:

I am often asked what dress form I recommend for fitting garments?

Here is my answer:

None!

No man can duplicate what God made! Use your own body for fitting.

Use a dress form to display a garment in your sewing room, but that's it!

Your body is unique! Unless you can make a complete body mold and mount it so that it duplicates your posture, a dress form cannot produce your fit accurately.

Some of you may have a body mold, but did you put it on a pole? Is that how you stand?
Do you have perfect posture, standing up with a steel rod up your back? Of course not!

• Do you know of a dress form that has one breast larger than the other like most of you do?
• How about one hip larger or higher than the other or one shoulder lower than the other?
• How about a curvature of the spine or forward shoulders or forward neck?
• What about a tilted waistline with a pot belly and a flat rear or heavy front thighs or saddlebag thighs?

Don't spend the money on a dress form. Discover how to find out what you need to fit the body you have. Forget the old rules and just use your common sense.

Fabric hangs on grain. If it doesn't, it wrinkles somewhere. It has got to hang on grain on you to be wrinkle free. It's that simple! So, you must determine where you need more or less fabric to make that happen. It just makes sense!

How do you do that?

You need to know where your natural body vertical lines are so the lengthwise grain is perpindicular to the floor.

Where should YOUR center front, center back, right and left side seams go?

Maybe your centers are off to the right or left. Mine is.

These sections around your body are probably not equal. You need to know exactly what each section needs.

You can not use the standard measuring techniques that you always have like measuring around your total body and dividing that by four to get your right and left front and right and left back.
That doesn't work on most bodies, especially we senior citizens. Things shift over the years.

You need to know how much you tilt in order to keep the horizontal grain parallel to the floor.

When you wear a garment, it either hangs from your shoulders or from your waist. It is critical that you know how much your body tilts at these hanging points to have the fabric hang on grain on your body.

The horizontal lines that must be parallel to the floor are the hipline for the bottom half and the yoke line for the upper half of the body.

See my article in the July 2006 issue of Sew News where I wrote about fitting the senior figure. You can request a copy if you don't have it.

Your waist line could tilt any which way and your shoulders could also be uneven with one lower than the other.

How do you adjust a dress form for that? I'd much rather deal with the real body.

The garment industry makes balanced garments to look good on a hanger, but what happens when you hang it on your uneven body?

You finally realize that you need uneven clothing in order to hang straight on you. At least, that's what I learned about my body.

If you suffer from fitting frustration like I did for so many years, I urge you to take a look at my brand new fitting method, "Common Sense Fitting Method For Hard-To-Fit Sewing Folks Who Want Great Fitting Skirts and Pants"

This downloadable fitting course is a great start to understand the principles of how to determine what you need and where you need it. Fit the best dress form for you - your body! It just makes sense!

To Your Sewing Success,

Marian

Dress Forms

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Sewing Tips - Fitting Skirts Using Common Sense

Sewing Tips

Hi Sewing Friends:

Skirts are perhaps the easiest garments to fit. A straight skirt almost tells you what you need to do to make the skirt fit correctly. If the skirt doesn't fit well, figure problems definitely show.

I encourage my students to begin their fitting projects with learning how to fit a skirt. If you get your skirt to fit correctly, it really helps to build upon that fit - UP for the bodice and DOWN for pants. Think about that!

To begin your skirt fitting project, start with a classic straight skirt. All the seams on these skirts must hang perfectly plumb or perpendicular to the floor. The hemline must be level or parallel to the floor. Then, you have a beautifully fitted skirt.

It always seemed dumb to me to measure up from the floor to make your skirt hemline level. It still hangs crooked if your body is crooked. Why? Because your skirt hangs from your waist! If your waist line isn't level, the skirt will never hang straight on your body unless you make the waist crooked to match your waist line. Doesn't that make sense?

Think about a pregnant woman for a minute. When she has a big belly, her skirt hikes up in the front and the skirt has diagonal pull lines pointing to her tummy. You can measure from the floor all day long, and the skirt will still have the diagonal pull lines and a hiked up look. The problem is at her waist line, not the hem line. Deal with the problem where it is!

Fit should be incorporated into the sewing pattern before you cut out your skirt. But, you ask, how do I know where I need to alter, how much I need to alter and how do I do the alterations?

It's in the book! My ebook, that is. I give you specific step-by-step instructions on how to determine what your unique body needs to get your fit and I even tell you exactly how to alter your sewing pattern. See my new "Common Sense Fitting Method For Hard To Fit Sewing Folks Who Want Great Fitting Skirts And Pants". It just makes sense!

You aren't sure you have a problem? Try on a straight skirt that you have in your closet. Here are some tips to help you analyze it.

Do you have. . .

• A high hip? A high hip makes a hemline shorter on the high side of the body.
  
• A "pot" tummy or large abdomen? A large abdomen makes the hemline stand away from the legs at the center-front.
  
• A flat seat? A flat seat makes a hemline touch the legs in the back and the side seams will swing toward the front.
  
• A large waist? A large waist looks even larger if the waistband is too tight.
  
• How about rounded buttocks, or sway-back or large thighs?

When you identify your specific fitting problems, you can discover the fitting solutions. When the fitting solutions are applied to the skirt sewing pattern, the skirt fabric lies smoothly on grain on the body.

With my "Common Sense Fitting Method", you can determine exactly how much your body differs from the sewing pattern. You never have to guess or do the trial and error method again. It isn't necessary when you absolutely know what you need, exactly how much you need and where you need it. Believe me!

Good fit improves your figure tremendously. You will look thinner, more fashionable, and feel more comfortable, too.

Of course, when you cut out your skirt, the fabric must be on grain. You must also lay out your sewing pattern on grain. No cheating! Your skirt will not hang correctly if you cut it off grain. Be careful and always respect grain. You really can't fight it. Grain wins every time. It's like that tee shirt that comes out of the wash with the twisted seam. That garment was cut off grain. You don't want that!

Always preshrink and straighten your fabric before you cut out your garment. It saves a lot of frustration and potential problems later.

Skirts are always in fashion. Good fitting skirts will conceal figure problems. No matter what size or age you are, it seems everyone needs to make some sort of fitting alteration to their skirt sewing pattern so that it fits their body correctly.

And the extra bonus is that when you get your good fit in a skirt, you are half way to getting your pants fit. Both skirts and pants fit the same from the waist line to the hip line. Wouldn't you love to have great fitting pants, too?

It's all in the book. You get two for one. Discover how to fit skirts and pants and enjoy comfortable, good fitting pants and skirts forever!

I just makes sense!

To Your Sewing And Fitting Success,

Marian

PS: If you have a website, you can make a nice commission by selling my ebooks. Check out my affiliate program at my website, 1st Step To Sewing Success

Sewing Tips


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