- By switching the "S" from the end of Rules and putting it after Pattern, we change Pattern Rules to Patterns Rule.

Everyone who sews needs to know patterns.

When we sew without the basic understanding of patterns, it's like cooking without understanding how to use a stove.

We wanna make sure you're using all of your tools when creating your own fashion collection.

So my goal today is to help you understand the best tools possible.

Join us today, I'll show you how and why patterns do rule on Fit 2 Stitch.

(light music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics, (light music) Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois.

(light music) Bennos Buttons.

(light music) Kai Scissors.

(light music) Sew Steady.

(light music) O.C.

Sewing, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove, and Irvine, California.

(light music) Richland Sewing Center, Dallas, Texas and the Metroplex.

(light music) Cynthia's Fine Fabrics.

(light music) And Mike Gunther Industries.

- I was so excited to go to college, major in fashion merchant fashion design, the most exciting class that I was, on my agenda was pattern making.

My disappointment was that there was no prerequisites to that class.

There was no pattern making advanced.

Like no 201 level.

It was pattern making 101, I thought it can't be that simple.

There's no way and I remember scouring the book to see, okay, where's the second part of this class.

I just knew it had to be harder than this.

And so once I was in the class, they, one of the first assignments was to make a pattern, a blouse pattern, using a, not using a store bought pattern.

And I thought, okay, you know, I'm always wanting to try to get around what ever rule I have to, how can I get around this rule?

So I called my Mother, I said, Mom, if you mail me a pattern that means I didn't purchase the pattern, and I fulfilled the rule and I still don't have to do this because, really, I was not a happy camper, and I was really nervous, and I felt like I can't do this.

Well, my Mother did not mail me the pattern.

Just an FYI, a little insight to my Mother's personality, she did not mail me the pattern.

And I actually did have to learn patterns.

And what I learned in that process is that what I was really missing out of all of this, was kinda the confidence really, to just move forward.

I was in a class.

I was learning the rules, but I will tell you, it was just complete nervous breakdown to actually have to do it.

Because I had sewn for so many years and every time I sewed, I went to use patterns.

So to not have those patterns, to have those patterns taken away from me, that was all my security.

So I understand how you feel.

I'm gonna be here right with you.

You don't need to be crazy or nervous.

We're gonna give you the rules, and I'm also gonna give you the confidence.

And the one thing I would recommend is you just do one project.

And the failure, if it happens, is not failure, it's really part of the process.

But it is important to know the rules.

So what we have to recognize first is there's five basic pieces.

The bodice front, the bodice back, the skirt front, the skirt back, and the sleeve.

So I want you to just think that every garment, every person, male, female wears, comes from these five pieces.

That's it.

It doesn't get any more complex than that.

So if you look at these five pieces, how many changes can there be?

Well there can be a lot.

But most are actually fabric changes, not pattern changes.

So we're gonna have some fun with these patterns today and because patterns are absolutely my joy, I'm gonna communicate back to you.

And I remember when I was taking this pattern class.

It seemed like everyday I'd be on the phone with my Mom.

Mom, you're never gonna believe it's so much easier than what we were doing it.

And that's what pattern rules will do for you.

They will make it so much easier than the way most of us are doing it because we don't know what we're doing.

So recognize that first off designers have the idea.

We talked earlier, Laura showed us how to make that collection.

They have the idea first of fabrics, and then, the fabrics come first, and then the patterns.

So many of us, as we home sew, we actually have the pattern first.

And then we go and find the fabric.

That process is okay, that process works.

And maybe it's not the perfect way to do it, but it still works.

However, the next part, kind of makes it even worse because when we have designers have these five basic pieces, and then these fit.

They have put them on a, on a either a dress form or a fit model, or something, and they fine tune the way they fit, and then they put the styling into the patterns.

Because that's the easiest way to do it.

Unfortunately, we do it backwards.

We buy by the style, as a home sewer, and then we try to put the fit into it.

And when we do that, because it's, not just because it's the most difficult way to do it, if we don't know the rules of what they have done, then we can really, you know, we call 'em wadders, you just, you take 'em and you wad 'em up and you throw 'em in the corner because you're just of frustration.

The frustration comes because the education just isn't there.

So, let's talk darts.

Because darts are the very first thing a pattern maker does to the pattern.

If you notice the bodice, there's two darts.

Bust dart and waist dart.

You'll hear this over and over, not to worry, just kinda get the big picture and then work it backwards.

Bust dart, waist dart.

If any garment you look at, and I'm gonna refer to the mannequins here for a minute.

If any garment you look at, we're gonna look at this blouse, does not have a bust dart, which it doesn't, then you know that that dart is either moved, it's been something because you only have two choices with a bust dart, and that's either to sew it or to move it.

You can't just leave it out.

You can't just cross it out and say I don't wanna sew it today.

Because then your side seams won't match.

So your only options with the bust dart are to either sew it or move it.

Keep that in mind.

When these two darts converge together, that's called the bust point, and that aligns to the nipple of the body.

So in fact, that's the only anatomical alignment of pattern versus body.

The rest are a little more opinionated.

There's no opinion on this one, it's firm, that's where it is, and so what those two darts have to do, they're called fitting darts, because later we'll talk about design darts versus fitting darts.

These fitting darts have to come into what's called the bust circle.

And the bust circle is radiating around the bust point and has to be within three inches in order for it to do any good.

Because the bust is the largest and most prominent bulge on the body, or at least we, we hope it to be.

When we go to the back there's no bust circle.

There's just simply the shoulder dart and the waist dart.

They don't have a bust circle.

They don't have the rules that we do on that bust, on that bodice front.

When we look at skirts, really the only difference between the front and the back is that the front darts are three to five inches in length, the back darts are five to seven inches in length meaning the back darts, because the bulge of the rear end is lower than the bulge of the tummy.

We know that the back darts are longer than the front.

But that's the only difference in the skirt.

We draw on a hip line.

The hip line is drawn in, usually, between seven and nine inches from the waist, that depends on how tall we are.

And again, those rules are very clear and we'll have a lotta fun dealing with those.

When we deal with the sleeve, the more we understand about sleeves, and we're gonna make sleeves later on in another show.

Very simple for you.

So we're not even gonna sweat sleeves right now, 'cause I promise to make them to where you don't even have to think about them.

But I do need you to understand the parts.

The cap line is the circumference of the sleeve.

And that's important because when you go to measure a garment that you like, and you really want to take a sleeve and understand why you like it, you wanna measure the circumference.

That's the cap line.

And then you can bring it right back to the pattern to make sure that what you're sewing and what you're wearing is the same and that you're going to like them.

Cap height.

That's the distance from the cap line to the top.

And then the cap seam line, which comes along, is what you sew into the armhole.

When I say these terms, you guys, just hit replay because there is times where I remember my sons gave me sailing lesson for Mother's Day and I was sitting on the boat and the captain's going the bow and the stern and I'm going like, I'm gonna sink, 'cause I can't remember all these terms.

As you use patterns, they'll come to you, not to worry.

But the first thing I wanna do is talk to you about how to move these darts.

And there is a couple of methods, and so I want to show you the first method that we're gonna do, and it's called the pivot method.

So what you have to do first, and I'm gonna kinda use my finger as the pivot, but the pivot is actually the bust point.

I'm going to mark on this particular pattern, where I'm going to move the dart.

And what I'm gonna is, I'm gonna move the bust dart to the shoulder.

Easy enough?

So I actually start tracing at where the new dart is going to be.

And I'm gonna trace this, I'm gonna trace this, gonna come all the way down, again, marking my darts, no difference, and when I come to the dart, which is there, then I'm going to close, I'm gonna hold my finger there, I'm going to pivot, you noticed I pivoted the top line to the bottom line, because I'm closing up that dart, and when I do that you notice this whole top moves and then I'm gonna continue my tracing.

And I start and stop where my original mark is.

So when I take this way, what you see is this dart is now up here.

And that is the beginning of what we call, and again, I'm gonna mark this, it's called the princess seam.

It's the very beginning of what we call the princess seam.

So, that's one way to move a dart.

Let me tell you, that's not the way that's most commonly used.

And the reason why, and you'll kind of, let's come back to this for just a little bit, is we'll see that, gosh, if that pattern slides a little bit, if I don't close that quite all the way, I can have some, some problems going in.

So, the next method, that's called pivot, this is called cut.

So all I'm gonna do now is cut this dart to the pivot point, I'll do the same thing here, cut this to the pivot point, and I close this up, and bam, there it is.

So let's compare the two together.

Because what you'll see is the end result is exactly the same.

It's just this one was done twice as fast as with this one is done.

So this whole slash concept versus pivot is really what we're most familiar with, and really what we use most of the time because of its speed and because of its accuracy.

But there are times when the pivot method will come into play and et cetera, et cetera.

So we're gonna know about those two methods, and we're gonna look at a style.

Because what I wanna know is the very first thing a designer ever does, pattern maker, is they always move darts first.

So I can't even get to the design until I move the darts because darts play a functional role rather than a decorative role.

I wanna make sure the function of the garment is sound before moving on to the design of the garment.

So, let's look at a couple styles, and we're going to draft these styles out, and this is gonna be just too much fun.

So I look at this, and when I look at a garment, the first thing I ask myself is where are the darts?

Are they in their original positions?

Is there a bust dart there?

There is not.

The bust dart's been moved up to a princess seam.

Exactly what we did.

So that's the first thing I'm going to do.

This is asymmetric, and then we're gonna add a collar.

Just step by step.

We don't have to worry about the sleeve just yet, but that's step one.

So move the darts, asymmetric for the front, add a collar to the back.

Let's go walk through that process.

So actually, I'm gonna use this because, you know what, I've already moved that dart.

Now, when I create the princess seam, the first, the next part that I do, is I recognize that the darts of the bodice are line with the darts of the bottom.

So if you recognize, although this waist dart is larger, this is divided into two, but by the time I combine those two, they'll equal this one.

So I can cut and combine these darts.

Very easily done.

I can put the pivot point for both of them at the hip line.

So see when I'm moving darts that are on the skirt, I can use one pivot point for both of them.

And when I close this up, now this one becomes larger, and it becomes large enough that you see now, that all these darts line up.

So there's the darts to my top, the darts to the bottom.

And now I can cut this all as one piece and simply create the princess line that I wanted to.

Let me just show you one other part.

Because what I do is when I cut these, I actually cut out the darts.

Because when I have the seam allowance, it's what creates the princess seam.

So all the darts get cut out, and then I just take this line all the way down the front.

Remember anytime I cut a pattern apart I add seam allowance and put it back together.

So there I have the one, and there I have the next part.

Add seaming allowance and I've taken those darts and built them into the seam.

So if those darts aren't right, I can fix them, but I have to go about it a different way, which we're gonna show you a little bit later.

Alright, so let's put that aside, but keep the concept in mind.

Because when I build asymmetric, I wanna make sure we understand that asymmetric just means I have two fronts, and I made them twice.

Let's take another quick look.

Just to where we're sure of what we're doing here.

Notice that the asymmetric goes from the center front over to the waist at the side here.

So I'm gonna put both fronts together, I'm going to make one cut by paying attention to where it goes.

Remember it went from center front over to the side to waist right there.

But I'm gonna keep it all as one.

So I'm gonna use this as my front.

It went from the center front over to the side, so it goes all the way over to here.

And now what happens is this is all one, but we cut it twice.

So one comes over on the top, and one comes over on the bottom.

See it's so much fun and it's so easy.

It's not hard.

It's just more rules.

But we're gonna learn some more.

So now we're gonna add a collar.

And we're gonna do this now, but we're gonna do a little more detail later, but I wanna give you the basics, so that we can play with it.

Alright, so on these basics, here, we're gonna take our French curve, and I want you to understand a couple things about collars.

There's several types of collars.

But they're all, remembering that they're a one to one ratio.

So what that means is the length of the collar and the length of the neck edge are exactly the same.

So collar, by definition, is always an added piece of fabric.

The length of the neck edge, the length of the collar are always going to be the same.

When I turn her around and I look at the collar in the back, this is what's called a full roll collar.

And it's called a full roll collar because it comes up and completely covers itself.

If you notice it doesn't go down onto the body of the garment at all.

It just comes up and covers.

So the collar's kind of standing, and it is by name, it's called a full roll collar.

So what that means is if I measure the neck edge and I can measure that one, two, three, four, easy to do, I can measure that, five, six, seven, and then I take one long piece of paper and I simply measure exactly the same.

So I took those two measurements, I added 'em up together, they were seven inches.

That's the only thing that has to be right about a collar.

Because the rest of the collar is all decorative.

You put this on the fold because you're gonna have two sides, now, you're gonna cut the collar as one.

But that's what's gonna make my full roll collar.

It's just that easy.

I can do anything I want to this outside edge.

I can do all kinds of decoration, I can make it wider, you see points that are really big.

But this neck edge always stays the same.

So here's why I want you to know that.

It's because if I go in and I just like, gosh, this neckline is just way too tight against my neck, I wanna lower it down.

I can lower that neckline to whatever I want.

All I have to do is measure the original, measure the change, figure out how many inches are the difference, and the just add those inches to the length of this collar.

I can either do it at center back, I can do it here.

As long as the collar and the neckline measure one to one.

Alright, that's just too easy.

That's just too easy, it's too much fun.

Alright, now what I wanna do is talk about vent holes a little bit.

Because there's many times where we have a base and what we wanna do to that base is simply add buttonholes down the front.

So very easy rule of button's holes are you take the radius of the button, plus a quarter inch.

So again, see that has to be predetermined.

That radius, that button size, a lot of us will get a pattern or we'll get something and we'll say I don't like those buttons, I wanna put on this.

And we'll change the sizing of them.

So I want you to understand that when you do that, you can, but you should add a little more to center front.

So this is my center front on a garment.

So what I have to add is the radius of a button plus a half an inch.

The radius of the button plus a half an inch.

I'm gonna use a different color here just so you can see it a little bit better.

The radius of a button plus a half an inch.

So I'm gonna use an inch button as an example.

The radius of the button is a half an inch, I'm gonna add plus a half an inch, that's an inch, plus my seam allowance.

So what I'm gonna end up with is an inch and three eighths because my seam allowance is three eighths inch, and I draw the straight line.

And then all that will do, that's as easy as it gets, because I just simply cut off the rest.

So here we go, that's what my new button up top will look like.

And I'm good to go.

As long as I keep that little one inch button, then there I have it.

The radius of a button plus a button inch, and I do that to both sides, I have a place for my facing 'cause I have a seam allowance, my center fronts will cross.

Center fronts always come back together when I'm dealing with fit, and those button holes will button up nicely.

There'll be no gapping.

I've got my blouse and I'm ready to go, and boy, am I happy with it.

Let's talk about a skirt a little bit.

When we do a skirt, we have some really fun options.

And one of the options we have is to take the skirt and change up the darts.

And so I wanna do that and I want you to see that when I pivot these darts out now, in the skirt, I've got options here as well.

I can, the first pivot point I'm gonna use, is I'm gonna take this dart and I'm gonna move it to the hem.

What we know about skirts is they have several different names to them.

We, first we have the basic.

Then we also have a skirt that's called a straight skirt.

And what I know about a straight skirt, which is actually our best look, is a straight skirt is one inch smaller at the hem than it is at the hip.

So if I actually take and draw that line narrower, and again, it's usually one inch each a piece.

Then when I fold this up, the hem will actually be narrower than the hip.

And that's called my straight skirt.

Then I have what's called an A-line, and by definition, the hem is wider than the hip line.

And when I do that, use your darts, and I'm gonna convert my darts to flare.

When we say stuff like this that's just because darts are, they can be changed to different things.

We can change them to seams, we change them to gathers, we can change them to fullness.

We don't have to have darts in every garment, but we do have to understand what they do to become something else.

And so in this particular case, I'm gonna take and cut to the hip line, and then I'm gonna cut from the hem of the skirt up to the hip line, and these are what we call our pivot points.

When we actually leave just a little bitty hinge right there, I'm gonna close this up, and what you see is there's fullness there at the bottom.

Now watch, this is kinda cool, I'm gonna do the same thing here, but I'm just gonna use the bottom of the dart as my pivot point.

Remember, like the bust, there's no one pivot point?

We get to move that pivot point all the way around.

So here, I'm gonna cut all the way to but not through, well, in college, we always got a little grade down when we did that but now I can just actually tape it back together.

And I'm gonna close this dart up.

And you see when I do that, you actually have more flare at the bottom.

So I get more flare by moving the pivot points up.

It's just way too much fun.

Once you learn these basic rules, you'll just have so much control over everything you get to do.

So I wanna show one more thing real quick.

We're gonna go to this blouse, and you can see when you look at this, there's no darts.

Where are the darts?

So remember that darts are gathers, so what I did with this, is I took this dart, I cut to but not through, remember, it's not through but not to, I remember all the time cutting my patterns up.

My teacher would always say, "You cut through, I said to."

And she's right, I cut through.

And still to this day, after all these years, I'm still cutting them apart.

So what I'm gonna do is, this is where I want the gathers, I wanted it center front.

I'm gonna close that up, and once I close it up, the dart is now at center front, but I don't have to stitch it as a dart.

I stitch it as gathers.

And I have all this fullness.

If I decide I want more, then I take this dart.

I can take the waist dart, because if you notice in that particular pattern, there's no waist dart either.

So I can close that waist dart up, I can add it to the front as well, and that's the beginning of making that pattern, and then guess what, I can even do more.

And if you don't stop me I'll go crazy.

Just 'cause I love making patterns.

Alright, so you'll find that I can pivot points over to the side now, and I have darts that are built into the pattern.

They have external pivot points, and when they have external pivot points, I don't have to sew them on a sewing machine.

Way too much fun.

So, I want you to just go through, take a deep breath.

Start by looking at garments and say where did the darts go?

And I've gotta find out where they went.

They've either been sewn, moved, or changed into something else, that's your homework assignment.

So grading, fitting, what is the difference?

You know it's really important as sewers, even though we don't do all that, that we understand them, so be sure to be here next time on Fit 2 Stitch and we'll clearly define it all.

(light music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Britex Fabrics.

(light music) Vogue Fabrics, Evanston, Illinois.

(light music) Bennos Buttons.

(light music) Kai Scissors.

(light music) Sew Steady.

(light music) O.C.

Sewing, Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove and Irvine California.

(light music) Richland Sewing Center, Dallas, Texas and the Metroplex.

(light music) Cynthia's Fine Fabrics.

(light music) And Mike Gunther Industries.

(light music) To order your four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch, Series 6, please visit our website.