- In a previous episode, we learned that patterns rule.

Today, step by step, we'll discover how patterns change.

We'll start with a basic blouse, and first move the darts, second add a collar, and finally introduce the option of a two-piece sleeve to any blouse you have.

This process will streamline fitting for any garment you make, and that's called styling.

The fit remains the same, but the styles are infinite.

One fitted base, many new styles, today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics, Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois, Bennos Buttons, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, O.C.

Sewing, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove, and Irvine, California, Richland Sewing Center, Dallas, Texas and the Metroplex, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Mike Gunther Industries.

- Today we're gonna take you through the process exactly what designers do, so that you'll understand when to add, what to do, and how to do it.

When fit comes into play, when draping, all the details, we're gonna go through it, and this is really fun.

So imagine that you're me for a minute, I'm a patternmaker, and I get a garment from somebody, and they love this garment, and they want me to make a pattern.

They give me a base, I have to take that base and take the styling of this pattern and put it into that base.

So we're actually gonna do the whole process.

We're gonna do this for Jeannie, because she enjoys shopping and all of that.

But first we've gotta go through and make sure we understand the base that we're starting with.

Remember when we had the five pieces, and those five basic pieces were what everything came from.

Bodice front, bodice back, skirt front, skirt back, and sleeve.

We have added ease to those.

We have added a little bit of styling.

So that affects circumference.

We still have a bust dart in the primary location.

We have our waist dart in our primary location.

On this particular blouse, the shoulder dart has been built into the body of the blouse, but we still have the waist dart of the back.

So none of that has really changed.

What has changed is the sleeve, the sleeve is a little more expanded, it is a blouse sleeve, that's the base.

The designer or you has one blouse sleeve, as we've mentioned, and then we'll just repeat that same sleeve over and over, changing what we want, leaving what we want.

But remember what we'll leave is the cap seam line and the armhole.

Those two things will always go together.

So because this is our base blouse, we have our cap seam line, we have our armhole, and the two are gonna stay together, even though we go to change the styling.

We also have a collar.

The collar's been made, we measured the neck edge, we made that collar, we'll kinda go through that process again and show you how, but first let's make sure the step number one we do is we make the muslin.

So what I did in this particular case is I copied the base pattern.

I did the front, did the back, I've got a sleeve and I've got the collar, those are the four parts.

Then I've made a muslin, and I've made that muslin in Jeannie's size so that it will fit her, work with her, do all of those things, and so we're gonna bring her on, and we're gonna make sure this muslin fits her where she's happy with it, where it really gives her enough ease that what she wants.

Now today we're making a blouse.

She's got a little t-shirt on here for modesty, but recognize that you wouldn't have any t-shirt, it'd be just how you like the blouse, and the way I recommend you do that is to measure the widest part of the blouse, which is just under the underarm, right through the bust line, pick out that size, and it'll give you what you want.

And she's really comfortable with this, yes?

- Yes.

- Okay, so what we're gonna do is fix what she's not comfortable with, and I'm not even gonna ask her, I'm gonna tell her where I think it looks best.

But the first thing I'm gonna do is go in that same order.

L, so with L, that bust dart, little bit too high?

- Way too high.

- Way too high.

I'm not even gonna try to fix it here.

But what I am gonna do is put a note that I wanna move it down, and I'm gonna say two inches.

And what that will do is lower this whole thing down two inches.

I'll show you the ramifications of that once we get back to the table.

We're gonna move that dart down.

Again, because the dart end is draw correctly, it has rules and how to make that dart end, we don't need to do any of that, we're just gonna take, make a cut, drop the whole thing, we're gonna add in two inches, that will get it exactly where she wants it to be.

All right, so that length is okay.

Next we're gonna look at the back.

We're gonna see if there's any swayback, anything that needs to be fixed there.

And again, I see some diagonal wrinkles.

No, I actually don't, that actually looks okay.

In this particular blouse she's looking okay, I don't see that to be a problem.

Keep in mind that that circumference is up to you.

I'm gonna bring her to the front just again, because I think what I would do is take out this vertical dart here in the front.

The back darts I'm gonna leave the same size.

The reason I'm taking this one out is it really is gonna give her a little more space.

And she may not need it, but I'll tell you what I do, and what I believe with those vertical darts, is on those vertical darts in the front, those are something that can always be draped in after the fact.

So, a lotta times on the blouses I'm making, I actually don't even put those darts in in the beginning.

And then once, depending on the material, once I see that I want them, and I'm gonna encourage you to always keep them, and the reason being is because once a dart is stitched, you can't see how big it is.

And so these little darts, what they do, is remember that vertical line that we were talking about?

They give us a great vertical line.

So darts are a good thing, even if they're very small, even if we have to add to the side seam to get those darts, that just looks better, does it, it feels better?

- Yup.

- Yeah, so, there's no reason to be tight in our blouses.

Blouses actually have more ease than any other garment that we wear, and if you go back to the tailoring show, when he was measuring for a men's shirt, he said, "You measure the gentleman," and I said, "How much do you add extra that?"

And he said, "Depends on the personality."

That's exactly the case here.

It depends on the personality.

Some women just want more room in their clothes.

It's all dependent upon you.

But don't think there's a right answer.

However, keep in mind that the closer it is to your body, the better it's gonna look.

Okay, so then what I'm gonna do, I've done length, I'm gonna do circumference, I'm okay with those, I adjusted the vertical darts, remember vertical darts affect circumference, and now I'm gonna start at the top and I'm gonna do depth.

And the first thing I'm gonna fix is this wonderful little shoulder seam, and when I do that, I want you to notice that this back is just kinda pulling up a little bit.

So I'm gonna just add a little cut through there, lemme grab my scissors.

I'm just gonna add a little cut right through here, because what I wanna do is I wanna watch that collar, and even though we don't have the collar on, I wanna watch that neck edge, and I wanna make sure that once that collar's joined on, and if you're not sure this alteration is necessary, then what you might wanna do is put the collar on, because I don't want that collar pulling down, I wanna make sure that it actually goes into her neck edge.

I actually noticed it when I was changing the shoulder seam and I noticed the back was kinda pulling against the shoulder seam.

So you can see how that shoulder seam is really falling into place more beautifully, and I'm not even gonna put a piece in there.

All I did was cut it and release it, because I can see I need a one inch at center back, and then I'll change it on the table when I get there.

So I can continue with the shoulder seam.

It lays much better now.

It has to feel better.

- Oh, I was just gonna say, it feels much better.

- Yeah.

All right, so that will feel really better.

Even after I pulled that up, I've still got some gapping.

What that last gapping means is that, that means I just need a little more dart.

The dart that we have there isn't quite enough, so I'm gonna take it and make it larger until that dart goes away.

Now what I don't have to worry about right now is the armhole and sleeve.

And the reason I say that is so many women say to me, "Well, the armhole's too low, the armhole's too low."

We're not far enough along to really know if the armhole's too low.

The sleeve is kind of always the winner.

So we really have to wait until we either get a sleeve in, or until we at least know the sleeve we're going to use, before we determine that.

But now I'm gonna put this back up.

I've made the dart larger, and when I do that, I'm just gonna add to both sides.

Okay, so now we see what we've done, and go ahead and release your arm, is that gapping is gone.

All right, put your arm down there.

And so we can see that that garment now lays close against her body, and I'm good with all those changes.

So we've got there depth changes.

We've actually got the shoulder, the back, the rounded of the back, that's a depth change, it's wider at the back, it tapers to nothing at the front, and then we've made that dart larger, so we're gonna take your muslin away from you.

- Okay.

- Can we do that?

- You can have it.

- 'Cause it doesn't do any good if you're gonna keep it.

We wanna make it better.

So, we're gonna take this, all right, and I'm gonna come back to this base, which is what I started with, and I'm gonna progressively work my way down and we're gonna make these changes.

So, first thing in it, I always go in the same order I did it in.

I made a slash.

If you look at your pattern, there's your armhole, and there's your bust dart, and your bust point.

Whenever I make the slash, I wanna make it right through that area.

It's actually called the free zone, and it means it won't affect anything, all it will do is simply lower the bust.

So I put a little slice in there, and how big I want that slice to be is my two inches.

So I can pin the bottom.

And you can see this is the easiest way to lower that dart, because again, I don't have to change any of the dart ends, and I'm simply good to go.

Then I can manipulate this side of it.

I can get this to be two inches.

It truly is a length adjustment, and the reason it is is because it's the same going all the way across.

All right, so that lowers the dart.

Next change is I made that dart a little smaller.

In this particular case, I can build in the dart later, so I'm not even gonna worry about that dart.

Then I went to the back, and on the back, I slashed the back.

So we're going to do that, and we're gonna open this up.

And remember that was an inch.

So that's why I say all of these are darts, because what we know is they're a little bit different on both sides, and they're wider at one point, and they go to nothing at the back.

So you'll be really surprised what that inch does for you.

And it will really, kind of if your garment has a tendency to pull to the back, this is what will help you.

All right, so we're gonna put that there, we're gonna make sure that measures my inch, and keep that into place.

All right, then the next thing I did is I made this dart a little wider, so I'm gonna pull it down here, I'm gonna pull it down here.

Because I've added this inch, and because I've actually made it a half inch bigger and a half inch bigger here, we've actually taken out the inch that I just added here, so the side seams will still match, and I don't need to change lengths.

If I had just added the inch here, I would have to either take it away down at the bottom, or I would have to add it on the back so that my side seams would still match, but I'm fine, because I've added it here, I've taken it away in the dart, and so now they balance.

The shoulder seam, I had a little bit of angle change, so the amount that I took away here is a half inch, and I'm going to taper to nothing.

I don't change the neckline point.

I only change a half inch there in the front, and I have a half inch here in the back, and I taper to nothing.

Now, whenever I change an armhole, I always have two options.

Do I change the sleeve?

No, because there wasn't anything wrong with the sleeve.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this off, I'm gonna take the original armhole, and I'm gonna put it back on, and I'm gonna put this at the new shoulder point, and you'll notice there it is.

It's just the whole armhole's moved down, and I'm gonna draw that new armhole.

Nothing needs to be done to the sleeve, because nothing was wrong with the sleeve.

I only had a drop in armhole, and so that sleeve's gonna go down, that armhole's gonna go down just a little bit.

I'm gonna do that in the front, I'm gonna do that in the back, and I think we're ready to change our pattern.

See I know this is so much fun.

You'll do it as many hours as I do it, just because you have the answers, and it's so easy, and the good thing about patterns is they don't change, it's not like they, you know, you learn 'em one week and they change the next week.

They keep doing the same thing over and over.

All right, so I've got all those changes down.

So, now what we're gonna do is we're gonna actually go make our new design.

And you're gonna just walk through with me how to do it.

Let's look at what we're doing.

Remember when we learned darts, we said you gotta learn to move the darts first.

So I wanna look at this pattern and say, where are the darts?

If you look here, what you recognize is that's a princess seam.

So that's a princess seam, and it goes into a yoke line, and if you notice the yoke line is about an inch and a half below the armhole, and it goes right across the top of the bust.

So we're gonna mark where that is on our pattern, and then we're gonna do that exact same thing.

So an inch and across the yoke line here is about an inch and a half here.

We can put it there, and we can draw it all the way across.

A little bit closer.

Remember, if we're gonna build the darts into that, we have to make it a, within the bust circle.

But we actually don't even have to use that for any fit at all, because all the fit can come through this line right there, and I'm gonna show you how to do that.

So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna move it into a princess seam, 'cause if we follow the seam down here, that's a princess seam.

So remember how we did that princess seam?

We cut the dart here, two cuts.

We'll do the front, then we'll do the back.

This goes here.

We're gonna cut through this big mess, I would recommend that you sew it all together, but we're gonna just shift it and close it up.

All right, you can tape it, you can pin it, you can sew it, you can do whatever you want to it.

And sometimes, I have women make a new muslin, just 'cause they get a little confused, and you can do that, it doesn't make any difference.

I have a tendency to kinda keep adding all the layers until I really understand what I'm doing.

And then what I'm gonna do is it's done in patternmaking all the time, remember this is actually cut apart, I'm not gonna do that just yet, and this is cut apart, and when we sew it back together, we'll create the princess seam.

But temporarily, I'm gonna tape this together.

Because I've decided that all the fit's gonna be in that princess seam, but let me show you something really cool.

Once I tape this together, I can actually now cut the yoke line, remember I drew the yoke line.

I'm gonna tape right down to where the yoke line comes into the princess seam.

Bam, right there.

And then when I cut the yoke line apart, see, the pattern doesn't lay flat right now, it's got this bulge to it.

Remember, it's called flat patternmaking.

So I'm gonna take and cut this apart, and now you'll see that part of the dart is actually in the seam.

Is that cool?

Do you see that?

It's actually in there.

These two will get sewn back together, let's cut these apart.

So the dart's actually gonna be built in there.

And again, when you cut this, you don't have to cut it, see, if I close it up, you can see there's a dart in there.

You don't have to make it really big, 'cause it's a seam, and after you make the garment, you can actually make it bigger, it's not gonna affect it.

But now you see as this sews together, this comes in, and there's my yoke and my darting and it's all in one, and it's a princess seam, and you can see this is all cut as one piece now.

(gasps) This is too much fun.

Okay, then we're gonna just make a collar.

And remember we had the original collar.

So let's just do that, and I'll show you what we're gonna do, we're gonna take this, and we're gonna measure it, we're gonna take the back, we're gonna measure it.

That will equal the length of this collar.

So now if you notice, with this particular collar, it's cut away from center front.

So we're gonna do that exactly on the pattern, we're gonna take, sometimes I cheat and I take my French curve to the store, and I kinda see how far apart it is, which there's only like two inches between, so I know this goes in an inch, in one inch, and then I know it has a little bit of an angle.

And I don't even know that it's necessary to do it exactly the same, you just wanna get the style.

Although I get hung up on doing it exactly the same, but just an FYI.

So then I cut this away.

And that's all a facing now, you don't have to worry about that, but I'm also gonna reduce the neckline to be exactly what it was before, because what you'll see is that neckline comes down a little bit more, and again these are all your preferences.

You can decide what you wanna do, how you wanna do it.

You can try the blouse on, which is what I do a lot of times, and I try it on simply because I just wanna check and make sure everything that I see is what I want.

So, before I went into this, what we did is we made up the blouse for Jeannie, the base, and we checked all these things that I did.

Jeannie, come on in and show us this blouse.

Like, it's beautiful.

If you notice, I want you to turn around, we'll start with the L. Notice the dart's lower, yay.

See the circumference, we actually added a little bit more, 'cause she felt a little more comfortable, had a little more room.

Notice the slash in the back, how beautiful that is, how the collar comes up higher, and that just lays so much prettier, and it doesn't give her that choking effect.

Everything's, you like it?

- I love it.

- All right, so there we go!

That's verification.

What I would do is definitely make that up before you start this process, I always just get real excited and I started the process.

Because now you see that I'm not making any fitting changes on here.

Simply I'm worried about style, and that's all I'm worried about.

Because I've made this neck edge the same, I can actually use the exact same collar, and the only thing I'm gonna do here is change the width!

So you notice that there's a little mandarin collar on that one, so I'm changing the width to the mandarin collar, remember I've gotta have seam allowances, and then I'm gonna cut off the end to be square rather than the rounded.

And don't change this neck edge.

Remember the neck edge to the collar edge are one to one, you don't wanna change that, you just wanna square this up.

And that's gonna be sewn onto here, and that's gonna give me the look that I have here with a little bit of space.

In this particular case, I'm not gonna do the hidden buttonholes.

Just because, take one little thing at a time, build up your confidence, don't do too many changes at one time.

It's kind of like a controlled experiment.

If you do too many things at one time, you don't know what goes askew.

So be careful to just move the darts and the princess seam, I've changed the collar, I've changed the neck edge, those are lots of great options to start with.

Just don't get too complicated.

I've seen so many women who kinda go off the deep end.

All right, so what we did is we made these changes, we made the blouse, and then what I'm gonna do what we call a wearable muslin.

So we chose a fabric that Jeannie really liked, similar to a linen.

She got to choose it in a color she wanted.

And I want you to make up a sample of that muslin so that you can try it on and see how it works.

Don't put the whole thing together, like don't put the collar on, don't do anything else.

It's just what we call a wearable muslin.

That means as long as everything is good and correct, I can move forward.

But the only thing we need to really do when we do that is we need to do up the body, we need to put on the yokes, and that way it'll work perfect.

Jeannie, come on in.

So this is her new blouse, and you can kind of start to see, where did we make the line?

It doesn't have to be finished, but it'll give you the confidence to kinda move on, so it's about where we move the line, did we increase the dart to be large enough?

We could take these seams and pull 'em into her body if she feels like we didn't make 'em big enough in the first place, so we could put a little dart there.

And it's not gonna be a dart, it's just really gonna be where we're taking that seam in a little bit, and we're gonna go from there.

Now I do wanna, it looks beautiful, do you like it?

- Yes.

- All right, very pretty.

What I wanna show you is about a one-piece sleeve, and I get this comment a lot, is that women say, "Well, my sleeve twists," because when you put it down, it's a one-piece sleeve, and because the sleeve is straight and the arm is crooked, there's always gonna be a twist on a one-piece sleeve.

There's a way to fix it if you wanna do a two-piece sleeve, but with a one-piece sleeve, it's just going to have that twist.

So what I'm gonna do is put a little dart here, and that's about halfway, actually, between the top and the bottom, so I'm gonna show you how to draft this one-piece sleeve, but this is ready to go, we could actually make the new one, huh?

- Yes.

- Looks really, really good.

Very nice, great job.

All right, so let's go back to the table, and let's learn how to do that two-piece sleeve.

And again, I'm gonna start with her one-piece sleeve directions.

This is the back of the sleeve, and what we know about that sleeve dart, and I don't know if you remember, but that original, the original dart, the original sleeve, actually had a dart in the seam.

And the way they got rid of that when they put a cuff onto this, when this pattern was made, is it was done with a cut here to the end of that dart.

It was closed up, and this dart was created.

So very easy process.

And basically what happened when this process was done is that the dart was converted to fullness at the bottom.

So all we're gonna do is put the dart back in, and that way I can use the dart whenever I want, or I can continue to make it a two-piece sleeve, and when I do that, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, we make a slash, we make a slash, we take this, we put it to the back.

We cut the bottom off.

We cut the top off.

See, there's way too much fun, and once I do that, I close this up, and that causes the bend in the sleeve that we all know and love, and it's perfect.

So what I'm gonna suggest is do some shopping, look for those garments that don't have a lotta change to 'em, but just something that you recognize, you can practice on, you have the confidence, and that you'll really have fun with.

This is all about fun.

So I'm gonna suggest some fun sewing potpourri that will include grain lines and so much more.

See you next time on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics, Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois, Bennos Buttons, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, O.C.

Sewing, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove, and Irvine, California, Richland Sewing Center, Dallas, Texas and the Metroplex, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Mike Gunther Industries.

To order your four-DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series six, please visit our website.