that must be applied each time to ensure that our creations will look their very best and most flattering when worn.

Line, focal point, color, and proportion are those principles.

The goal for today's show is to help ensure that your creation makes you look taller, thinner, and adds control where the focus needs to be.

We all have different body shapes, so how do we keep our clothing in proportion to our bodies?

We'll learn it today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] 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.

- It makes complete sense to me that while we're sowing our clothes we at least understand enough about line, focal point, color, and proportion to incorporate those principles into our clothes.

I've met so many women over the years who sow for themselves and men as well who do not understand these principles.

And while they sow beautifully on the sowing machine, they don't understand how to really make small changes that really make such an impact on that final garment.

So I wanna go over each of these concepts.

Just make them something to think about.

You don't have to live by them, but something to at least incorporate in so that you can think about.

Do I want this?

Do I want this?

Am I going here?

You're the one that gets to make all the choices and it's really fun, especially when you know what choices to make.

So let's first talk about line.

And I'm gonna show you a very common drawing.

I initially saw it done with frogs, but it doesn't matter what we use.

I'm gonna make two lines.

And those two lines are both going to be the exact same length.

I'm even using a tape measurer so we can tell exactly what those two lengths are and that those lines are the same.

Then I'm gonna change up each of them.

And on one I'm going to add lines that go out and on the other I'm gonna draw lines that go in.

And what we see now with this illustration is we clearly, if we looked at it after the lines were drawn on the end, we would say there's no way those two are the same.

It's a common enough illusion that we say, no this is longer, this is shorter.

And while we know that's not the case because we both know those lines were the same.

If we turn the lines up this way now, clearly one looks taller and one looks shorter.

So if I'm going to dress myself, I'm gonna choose the one that looks taller and certainly not the one that looks shorter.

So now we wanna take and interpret that into our clothing.

How can we do that?

Forget the patterns or the fabrics or anything else.

We're gonna combine them all together.

And the first way I'm gonna show it is I'm gonna borrow my two friends here.

We do it with stripes.

And so many of us don't even think about stripes.

How we do it, where they go.

But if you notice the one on my left, the stripes are going out in the direction, where here they're not.

They're going down.

And so if you notice where your eye goes, we want this one because this is going up and out.

That's kinda like a V neck.

And this one's going down.

So the positioning of our fabrics will make a difference actually how we make ourselves look taller, shorter, as well.

If we notice the V neck, V necks are great to create that line that goes up and down.

And we're gonna see some other ways.

Let's go back to the table 'cause we're gonna play a little bit here.

And what I know is in every case, one piece, one color, we're always going to look our best.

Some people say to me, what does that mean?

I don't really understand what that means.

One piece, one color.

That means that all of our clothing top to bottom is the same piece, one color.

And as we just saw over there, a sheath dress is a great way to do it.

Then if you notice, I'm going to make one of those darker.

And the minute that becomes darker, that one looks smaller than the other two.

So color has an impact.

We're going to go into a little more detail, but recognize that if I take that one piece, one color, and make it darker, the one piece, one color that's darker's going to look better than the lighter.

Now we're going to take and change up just a little bit because now what we're going to do is we're gonna go one piece, one color, and two pieces, two colors.

And what we can see is when we change and draw the horizontal, every horizontal line we create makes us look shorter and wider.

So let's look at that for just a little bit.

In this illustration again, notice everything's going vertical.

In this illustration, notice that I've got two pieces.

They're the same color.

This one's still always going to win, that one piece, one color.

Over here I've got two pieces, two colors.

Two pieces, two colors, we'll come back to that, but I wanna draw a couple lines on the table because what I see is even if I draw a horizontal line this way, this is going to look shorter and wider than what this is.

And especially when I start to draw a line that way, you notice she always win.

Taller, thinner, shorter, and even worse.

So this is the best we can do, one piece, one color.

Two pieces, one color.

Two pieces, two colors.

That's what I always want to keep in mind.

Over and over I get asked the question, I'm going to a wedding, I want to look my best, what should I wear?

That's not even a thought process should happen.

It's so not about you.

It's about how everyone will perceive you.

Kinda like what we were talking about with art.

This is gonna be my one piece, one color.

Put a vertical line down the center with trim, with buttons, with anything I want to.

Wear that little V neck and it's a home run.

It's the best I could look for wherever I'm going to go.

So the line that we create in our clothing, we're going to keep it one piece, one color.

Again, everywhere I go?

No.

My mother was an interior decorator, and she was 5'2, and proud of every pound she ever put on.

And my father and her would argue about that all the time.

But that's just the way it was.

And when she went to her homes and did her decorating and she won all kinds of awards, she put on a little uniform.

Her little sheath dress, the one piece, one color.

And I'll never forget one time she came out to visit me and I said my friends were all going out to lunch, me and my mom.

And she came in and she had on this big black skirt and this white top and with this big belt right in the middle of it.

And I remember looking at her and saying, gosh, that just doesn't make you look your best.

And she said to me, when I'm with people I love, I dress how I want.

So there's some great value in that I think.

Depending on where we're going, we certainly don't want to get hung up by all the rules, but at least use the rules and determine when you're going and where you're going and what rules you decide to apply and which ones you take away.

I would suggest you always create a focal point.

Principle number two is focal point.

And let me show you and let's talk about what that focal point can do because it's very, very powerful if we understand how to use it and how to use it to our advantage.

There's two types of focal point.

One's actually built into the garment.

If we look at this jacket, what we can see is these little grommets, these little fixtures.

That's all built into the garment.

I can't wear this garment and take them away.

Whenever I make a garment like that that has built in focal points, the garment's going to, it's actually not gonna be in my wardrobe as long.

I'll actually tire of it more readily.

It'll be more recognizable by people who are around me, and I'll have a tendency even though it has more punch, it won't have a staying power that maybe I want to have in some of my basics.

And so this is called a built in focal point.

Then what we have is we have an added on focal point.

And this is my friend the rose.

Contrast often is what creates focal point.

And so when that contrast is there and it's great between the red and the gray, pop, that's where my eye goes.

But this little fun thing is kind of a little magnet.

It can go wherever I want it to go.

And so you notice as I put that down at the waist, my focal point drops to the waist.

So I now can control where someone will look at me.

And that's kinda fun, you know.

People say to me all the time, I don't like this part of my body, I don't like that part of my body.

Doesn't make a difference.

You can kinda do whatever you want.

Let's understand again added on focal points, I'm gonna use a necklace because necklace trends have a tendency to change.

They come, they go.

Designers all the time are kinda telling us what to wear.

I'm gonna use this necklace.

And I want you to follow through with me and ask yourself, where does your eye go immediately?

Even after you close your eyes and open them back up again, where does your eye go?

And if you notice, your eye will go to the bottom of the necklace.

It's just the way it works.

It's just the properties of our eyes, but if I duplicate this necklace and make a double and bring it up there, now you see that I've got all the attention there at the neck even though the necklace isn't less beautiful or anything else.

So I'm gonna encourage for so many of you who don't want people looking at their stomachs, keep your focal point up, around the face.

Do that through contrast and that's the best way to do it.

When we talk about belts, belts again take us to a horizontal line.

Our goal is to avoid horizontals and create verticals.

So is this belt really doing us any positives?

Does it really lend itself to the outfit?

Even if it does in color, it probably isn't the best choice because really what it's doing is creating a horizontal line and a big horizontal line.

And if we go back even when I was in high school, there's some good things we're still rolling forward after all these years was these little old stretchy belts.

These are the best because what I can with these is I can put them and then what I can do is I can completely blouse the outfit over the belt.

And if you remember back in the 50s, the bloussan style was really popular.

And that concept was really good.

What I did is I created a top that was larger than the bottom, so it gave me the appearance that the bottom was actually smaller than what it was.

So the bloussan, every time I do it, I can do it but without creating a horizontal line by tucking that belt underneath the top and making that all go away.

Remember that when I have two pieces, two colors, it's enough that there's two pieces, two colors.

I automatically create a horizontal line.

But if I add a bigger contrast, you see all the attention goes there.

And I actually create even more lines.

Watch your horizontals because every time we add one of those horizontal lines, I get shorter and wider.

It happens all at the same time.

The only one that does this is someone who's six something.

You know, you get it.

'Cause I haven't met very many women who say, you know, I just wanna look shorter and wider today.

I think it's Tuesday and that's the way I wanna look, so I'd really watch those lines if I were you.

So vertical lines is what we're going for.

Watch your horizontals and create a focus.

In this particular case, in this garment, notice I took the stripes and I went vertical with them.

It's just a fun play.

I had choices because it's a woven fabric.

I could go horizontal, I could go vertical, I could've done anything I wanted.

I chose to go vertical and I'd keep that in mind.

Same with the front, same with the back.

In this particular garment because it was somewhat the same color, what I wanted to do was to create a pop of color.

And so that large contrast at the neck line helped me do that.

And I chose the farthest color away from the color wheel that I could.

Grays and reds, put them together, and that's exactly what I got to do.

So create a focus in your dressing.

It can be built into the jacket.

It can be added on by an accessory.

When it's added on remember that this particular shirt is gonna last a lot longer if it's a solid black than if it's got something built into it that makes it the same every time I wear it.

So create that focus.

Just determine for yourself whether you want it added onto the garment or actually changeable every time I wear the garment.

Then let's talk about color.

And it's not really color.

We dealt with that with Jason.

Jason did a great job covering that.

It's really color placement on the body is what I wanna think about.

You've decided your colors.

You've decided your collection, but which is gonna go to the top and which is gonna go to the bottom?

That's kind of a key thing to understand.

And we've got the perfect example with these two mannequins.

And that is whenever I decide and there's an old adage that actually said the white pants make me look heavy.

And really they don't make us look any heavier, but they do bring attention to the bottom half of the body unless I go monochromatic.

And remember if I do go monochromatic, that's back from two pieces, two colors to two pieces, one color.

And so that's always getting back to my sheath dress, one piece, one color.

And that's a good thing.

So in this case, notice that your eye drops down to the skirt because that's where the light is.

And what we know about our eyes is our eyes go to the light.

And so this particular outfit says to everybody, I want everybody to look at the bottom half to me.

That's just what I want them to do.

This outfit says just the opposite.

I'm more comfortable with eyes going up.

I've got a great focus on, and so I'm really having control over where people are looking at me.

And that's a simple thing to do.

So color placement on the body is not complex.

I just wanna keep the lighter colors on top.

The darker colors on the bottom.

However having said that, if you decide to put those lighter colors on the bottom, just recognize what you're doing when you do that.

Alright, so let's talk about proportion.

Proportion is just a really fun concept.

What we know about our bodies is our bodies are seven and a half heads high, most.

Seven and a half heads high.

And you know, it's a pretty good pattern and we didn't make it and it just seems to get repeated over and over and over.

But what we wanna look at is where those natural breaks.

The first natural break is at the bust line.

The next one's at the waist line.

The next one's the bottom of the rear.

The next one is mid thigh or above the knee.

Then at the knee.

Then we have mid calf and then the ankle.

Now what we wanna learn with that is simply that our body is so nicely done and so well proportioned that our clothing should keep that same proportion.

So what we do is we have a tendency to put on clothing that will cover the things we don't like about ourselves.

And so if we take our clothing and try to hide those things, that's not a positive because when we dress to hide, we'll never look our best.

Our clothing should enhance.

Our clothing should bring out what we are comfortable with.

And the rest, either change it or don't worry about.

We're not gonna do anything about it for the time being.

So what we wanna do is measure from our shoulder to our knee.

So I'm gonna show you a couple examples just so you can kinda incorporate that in and really understand.

And we're gonna look at some pictures here so that we can understand the concept completely.

I'm gonna look at a model and I can look at any model out there in the fashion magazines or wherever they are.

And I first measure myself.

So when I measure myself from shoulder to knee, I know that personally, I'm 40 inches.

I like the outfit.

I wanna look exactly like this outfit.

So I'm gonna measure this model from her shoulder to her knee.

And she's six inches.

So if I take six inches and times it to get me, I know that I'm eight times taller than what she is.

Not quite.

I'll do the math, but you guys can do the math.

So then what I can do is I can measure the jacket and how long that is and I can measure the skirt and how long that is.

But recognize that all dressed bodies should either be dressed in halves, thirds, fourths, or fifths.

Now keep in mind that that will automatically happen as we take these measurements and let's kinda go through the numbers.

I'm gonna use myself as an example.

I'm gonna use these 40 inches as an example.

So if I measure the little six inches and I know the jacket is half of that because I can see in this illustration, this is what we call a one to one.

Then I know on my body I'm gonna take the 40 inches.

I'm gonna make the jacket half of that and my jacket's gonna be 20 inches long.

And so I know on my body to get that look, the jacket's gonna be 20 and I'm gonna have exactly what I want, a one to one.

If someone's taller, shorter, and their measurement is say only 35 inches from their shoulder to their knee, then they'll divide that by half and come up with a measurement that is 17 and they're jacket will be proportioned to their body.

So they'll actually look exactly like the model because anytime you take a fashion photograph, what we know is there's generally nothing behind the model.

And the reason that is is they don't want you to understand how tall or short that person is.

It's objects that give us reference.

So we will look terrific like a model if we keep those proportions in scale to ourselves and recognize they can be changed.

So let's look at another example because this example's a little bit different.

And in this case again I'm gonna measure the model.

She's seven inches tall, so now what I know is that if I take that and make it to my 40 inches, I can measure the top part, measure the bottom part, and I'll know exactly what each of my pieces should be.

All I have to do is do the math and extrapolate them out.

And that's proportion.

The goal is we wanna keep our clothing in proportion to our bodies.

And once we do it, what we'll find is we'll repeat the process over and over again and all of our tops will match our bottoms.

The whole wardrobe will look like the height that you are.

And that's a good thing.

I wanna show you a shall collar for a little bit.

And I wanna go to the sowing machine and sow it.

And the reason why is the shall collar because the collar is built into the jacket, this is a great, tall look.

Sometimes I've heard back that it's a little complex to sow.

Again once you know how, it's really simple.

And we're gonna just make sure we understand the concepts of what's going on.

When we look at a shall collar, we can see that the collar's actually built into the front of the jacket.

And when that's done, we actually sow the center back of that collar first.

So I'm gonna put those two right sides together.

I'm gonna sow across right there.

Very simple to do.

And then what I wanna do is understand the rest of my match points.

So when I put that together, notice I've got the shoulder seams together.

The seam that I just sowed goes right to center back.

And I have to actually clip to make sure these portions are released because there's a little pivot that will take place when I go from the back of the shoulder seam to the rest of the shoulder seam.

So I'm gonna go across the shoulder seam.

I'm gonna pivot.

I have to sow with that cut side up, so I can see exactly where that pivot takes place.

Across the center back over to the other side.

And again there's my other pivot point and then across the shoulder seam.

So really of all the collars to do, I think it's the easiest one to do.

Just somehow if we don't know how, we make it a little harder than it is.

Very simple to do.

You'll have no problems.

So what I'd like to do now, let's actually bring Jeanie in so we can see these examples of what we're supposed to do.

And what we're supposed to do is remember the wider the hem, the wider we look.

Thank you, Jeanie.

And Jeanie has on a skirt today that is wide at the bottom, but maybe not necessarily her best look.

If I could ask her, I'm sure she's physically comfortable, but what, or I should say mentally comfortable, physically comfortable, too, both.

But it's not necessarily her best look.

And because if we apply the rules, what the rules and the principles say is that the narrower the bottom, the taller she'll look.

So we're gonna play a little bit here.

And what I'm gonna do is just pull in the bottom of her skirt first.

And I want you to see that a narrower hem, a narrower width at the bottom, really gives her height.

We saw this with Bob when he was teaching us about taking men's measurements.

When he put on a sport coat, a suit coat that was a little bit shorter, how much taller it made him look.

Men, women, we're all gonna be the same.

The narrower the hem, the taller we look.

But then as we shorten that skirt, oh my gosh, we even have more fun.

Because as you notice as we shorten it, she even looks taller.

And we could even go shorter, Jeanie, should we go shorter?

(laughing) I know Jeanie; she doesn't wanna go shorter.

But we wanna go and hit as most comfortable as we can get, so the shorter, the better, obviously within reason.

But many women say to me and I'm gonna drop that back down, I don't want my knees to show.

I don't like my knees.

And again that's why I say if we dress for our mental comfort, we'll compromise many times what we physically give ourselves to look like.

The longer that skirt and the wider that skirt, the shorter she'll look.

As I bring it up, people will say to me, ah, there's my knees.

And I keep saying nobody's two feet high coming in staring at your knees.

You don't need to worry about that.

So Jeanie while she's comfortable, she's not maybe the best she could look.

We'll make her look better.

So let's kinda make a little summation of what we've talked about just to make sure we understand those four principles and how to apply them.

First I've got line and what we know is vertical lines, one piece, one color is our best look.

The sheath dress, it's why Chanel made it.

The little black dress.

It's why it brought it into the history books and why it's been a classic all these years is because it makes women look the best they can.

And women know we love to look our best.

So one piece, one color, then we have focal point.

Create a focal point.

What we know about color is we wanna use it in places strategically.

It doesn't mean we have to always wear it on the top.

We're the ones who get to decide.

But it should be part of our decision making process, and that's the goal to bring all these ideas and concepts to you is you're the one who gets to decide how you want to do it.

And then lastly proportion.

What we know is that our bodies are proportioned so well.

We don't wanna mess it up when we put clothing on, and often we do that simply because we wanna cover this or we wanna hide that.

No one will notice that.

No one but us will notice that.

So we'll use all these principles and when we bring them all together, that's when we'll really look our best and that's when we're ready to go to the world and present ourselves.

But remember like my mother, not all the time.

It doesn't have to own us.

Remember, we own it.

And when we're with people we love, we get to dress exactly as we want.

Color is the key to great wardrobes.

And the more we know, the better designers we will be.

We'll take that color.

We'll incorporate it into all the principles we had, and we'll learn the history about color, which is really important.

All about color, next time on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] 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.

(gentle music) (upbeat music)