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Threads Magazine Podcast: "Sewing With Threads"
Patterns for Plus Sizes, with Gabby Brown and Leila Kelleher | Episode 100
00:43:04
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- [00:00]
A
You're invited to join the 2026 threads Folkwear Sewing Challenge. It's open to all, no matter what your sewing skill level. Contestants need to construct a look that updates traditional American garment design using a folkwear pattern or patterns from their vintage line. Folkwear is offering a discount on these patterns through April 1st. To find out the challenge rules and how to enter with photos and details about your sewn look, go to threadsmagazine.com A panel of experts will choose one winner to receive a prize package and bragging rights, of course. Join our Threads Folkwear sewing challenge by April 23rd. We can't wait to see what you've created. Welcome to Sewing with Threads, the monthly podcast with the staff of Threads Magazine. I'm your host, Carol Frase and this is our hundredth episode. Today. I'm joined by two guests, Gabby Brown and Leila Kelleher, the authors of a brand new book, Plus Size Pattern Making for Womenswear from Bloomsbury.
- [01:04]
B
Thank you. It's so good to be here.
- [01:05]
C
Thanks so much Carol. It's really great to be here.
- [01:08]
A
I'm glad you're both here. Gabby is a technical designer in the US Fashion industry. She's worked in ready to wear manufacturing for retailers such as Abercrombie and Fitch and J.C. penney. Gabby has expertise in fitting, construction, pattern making, grading and block development. She teaches workshops and intensive classes and works with private clients to create their own custom wardrobes. You'll find her on Instagram. Abriellej Brown Leila is probably best known to our listeners as the designer and pattern maker behind the plus size oriented pattern line Muna and Broad. She's also been a professor of fashion design and Social justice at the Parsons School of Design in New York. These days she's teaching at Toronto Metropolitan University. Leela's training is wide ranging from music performance to a doctorate in biomechanics and she brings all this to her fashion research and teaching. You can follow Leela at LeelaSose now. These introductions are very short obviously because both of you are really accomplished and very experienced, but I hope in the process of our talking you will expand on anything that you need to give us more of your background as you'd like to. But let's start out. I'm just so excited to talk to you about your new book, Plus Size Pattern Making for Women's Wear. As far as I know, this is groundbreaking and it's also a book that I found really enjoyable to read. It's a large and heavy book. It's not bedtime reading, but it is definitely sitting in a chair reading and you just learn so much on every page. Things that I didn't expect to learn from the book I did. And it was really a lot of fun. So I'd love to know what was the impetus behind writing it? What issues were you trying to solve and for whom?
- [02:48]
C
Thanks so much for that great introduction, Carol. We were really excited to write the book. It's been a long process. I think it took us about four and a half or five years, Gabby, something like that.
- [02:59]
B
It was many years
- [03:02]
C
anyway, so I mean, something that we both recognized when we met on Instagram was really some of the issues with plus size pattern making in the fashion industry, but also in the home sewing pattern world. And so we set out really to try and improve the practices there.
- [03:24]
B
Yeah, I had been writing for Socialists for a little while and Leela had reached out to me, I think, or had been sharing articles or something. And we connected and realized that in this sector there isn't any education around this. There are no plus size pattern making books at all, with the exception of ours now. But this was kind of what we discovered is a lot of folks will say, oh, I don't know how to do that, so I'm not going to. Right. So where do we attack it at the source? And the answer is if we can get this book into schools and start educating folks from the ground up when they're going through their fashion design university education, then they're going to come out into the industry with this already more knowledge and be stepping out on the good foot, as they say.
- [04:10]
A
Can you give us a little bit of a schematic about what's happening in the fashion industry and also in home sewing patterns that made you realize there was just not enough education in this area?
- [04:22]
C
Yes. So we started off at a time, especially in the home sewing industry, where there was a lot of conversation about size expansions. There had been some discussion in, especially in the independent home sewing world about expanding sizes and then had been some pushback from patent designers really saying, you know, I don't know how to do this and it's really difficult and I didn't learn how to do it and there aren't any resources. So that was really this, this impetus behind it. And so Gabby and I kind of connected and realized that we had a really similar approach to things. And we thought, well, can we, can we create that resource that people are saying they don't have? Because ultimately we just want everybody to be able to buy or make the clothes that they want to wear.
- [05:09]
A
Exactly. I think that's, that's a reason for doing it, in addition to wanting to get it into schools. But as you say, there's just not a lot out there for people to buy. And this is something that I've found really interesting in the book. A lot of information about what's lacking in ready to wear plus size clothing. And also I know from when I'm trying to choose patterns for our pattern review and threads that there are not as many plus size patterns available. That's changing pretty rapidly, which is. Which is really good. But for people who don't make their own clothes and want to buy them, they need to have knowledgeable people out there making patterns so that there can be clothes manufactured. And for any listener who's wondering more about that, you can find out about how clothing gets into manufacturing and the scheduling and why it is biased against creating good plus size lines. Something that I didn't know anything about. And it's really interesting and disappointing, of course, but not unexpected either. We know from watching Project Runway that people think it's just really hard to make clothing for plus size people and to make patterns for plus sized people. It's just so complicated. And, you know, those bodies are just really difficult. Your book goes against that completely, and I'd love to hear your views about where that came from, that myth, and why it's not true.
- [06:26]
C
Absolutely. I mean, we do hear this a lot. You know, as you said, it's on Project Runway, it's in the industry, it's in indie pattern making spaces. It's all over. And we really believe that the reason that people perceive it to be more difficult is that it might is it's unfamiliar. So if you go to fashion school or even if you go to community college to learn to do pattern making, typically speaking, you're working with a small size block. So maybe like a US size 4 or 6, something like that, or even smaller sometimes. And so then your eye gets really attuned to that shape and size of block. And so then when you're working with, say, a size 20, the shapes are different to fit that body. And so then because it's unfamiliar, it seems incorrect and it seems difficult because you're not used to that body. Also, like in the media, we just don't get a chance to look at larger bodies that much. And so the shape of the bodies with soft tissue is maybe not what our eyes are used to seeing. And we don't have the opportunity to even kind of visually Analyze this. And so then when you come to having, having to make a pattern for that kind of body, it can make it really challenging. So, you know, we really approach the book as coming from a point of view that it is not more difficult, it might be unfamiliar. And so what we really hope is that people will gain experience working with plus sizes, feeling confident to jump in and just try it and then realize that it actually isn't any harder. It's still the same. Absolutely. The same technical processes.
- [08:03]
B
Yeah. If I can just add on to that. One of the things that I hear, and Leela, I'm sure that you hear this all the time, is that the reason that plus size bodies are so hard to fit for is because there's so much variation. Now to go into what Leela is talking about, talking about and just saying, because we don't really have the chance to look at plus sized bodies, I would posit that there's exactly the same amount of variation in plus sized bodies that there is in straight sized bodies. The difference is that we are working on straight sized bodies every day. They're who books are written about, they're who we see in magazines. When we don't have that visibility towards what different bodies look like, it becomes a foreign concept and it becomes something that is a little bit more untouchable. We would argue that they're not harder to fit for at all in. You just have to get used to the shapes that you're seeing and working in that capacity.
- [08:51]
A
So how did the two of you become experts in this area if there's not really training? Are you self taught?
- [08:58]
B
I would say so, absolutely. So I went to fashion school at Pratt and we did straight size designing. We barely did fitting at all. That may have changed since I was there, but most of my knowledge comes from working in the industry and that's working on whatever I was expected to at the time. Which can be juniors, junior plus men's big and tall, plus size petite. So any kind of different specialty sizing that's required, you would kind of learn on the job as you go and then you gain that familiarity because you are in fittings all the time, you are speaking to people and you are reading online reviews. So you come away with a much fuller picture of what folks actual experience can be.
- [09:47]
A
So would you start with a fitting model that was chosen by the brand that you're working on? They would choose somebody that represented the size and shape they wanted to design for and then you'd work with that person and you'd figure out how to, how to make patterns that really work for that shape.
- [10:02]
B
Yep, absolutely. We would start, obviously in the industry, you start with straight sizes and then you expand from there. So one of the things that we talk about a lot is that plus size orders are placed after straight size orders. So the fitting time that you get with plus size models is much shorter than you would for straight size. So you are supposed to fit things in one or two samples and approve and then they go to cut and that's it. It's very different from straight sizes where you can get away with four or five different samples to make sure things are really perfect and obviously ready to wear. When I use the word perfect, I mean in general, pretty good looking because ready to wear doesn't fit anybody perfectly. We, I think we can all agree to that. But then, you know, it's kind of this weird self self fulfilling circle where plus sizes don't fit as great as we could make them because they haven't been given enough development time. Customer tries them on in the store, they're dismayed, and then they don't buy them or they buy a whole lot of stuff online, try it all on at home and send it all back. The store sees that as returns and then doesn't order into that style again. And so any opportunity to fit it and perfect it for seasons going forward is then lost.
- [11:22]
A
That's a really rotten cycle. I hate to hear that. How about you, Leela? I know you're an expert in biomechanics. Was that part of how you learned to do plus size drafting?
- [11:32]
C
Not at all, actually. I mean, I went to fashion school in the 90s in Australia and I also learned on straight sizes only. I did do some fitting in the program that I was doing, but then I worked in custom clothing and in wardrobe where the sizing is much more variable than in the fashion industry. So, you know, a lot of people who do get custom clothing made have bodies that don't work so well with ready to wear. So I had more experience with plus size. But then I kind of put my fashion career behind me for many, many years and end up doing ended up doing a PhD in biomechanics. And then so kind of 25 years after my fashion career ended, I kind of came back to it for my own practice and realized that I would have to draft my own patterns for my own body. And so I kind of used the, the knowledge that I'd learned in biomechanics in terms of how to look at bodies more objectively and analytically rather than just from an aesthetic point of view. And I kind of fused that into the pattern making knowledge that I learned, you know, many years ago and then started making patterns for myself. And then that ended up being my independent sewing pattern company, Winner and Broad. So then through the process of Winna and Broad, which has been over six years now, you know, it's been really great to release patterns, see people wearing them and just, you know, I feel, I never feel as though I know everything of course, but always learning and always trying to improve how things are done. You know, different approaches with different patterns and so, you know, really trying to like just improve and improve. So that's, that's really my process.
- [13:19]
A
I find it interesting when I, when I look on your website and read descriptions of patterns, how you often describe the benefit of the pattern, like how you designed it so that it will fit a larger body in a, in a comfortable and good looking way. And you talk about things that I wouldn't have noticed a certain type of curve along the upper back or bringing in the shape in certain areas of the body. And I learned from that. You know, I look at it and think, oh well, yes, that's why this looks really good. And it looks better than anybody who's, no matter what size you are putting on something that's just a little snug and hoping for, for the best and you know, just, it's stretch I can get it on so it's okay. That's really not the desirable way to choose your clothing, unfortunately.
- [14:00]
C
Yeah, for sure. I mean the approach that we take at Winter and Broad is that we don't believe that people should have to make pattern adjustments. So I think in the home sewing world a lot of people say, well, everyone has to make pattern adjustments so, so that the pattern fits well. But we actually don't believe that. We think that the patterns should well, fit well out of the packet for the person at that size. So that means that somebody at a size 18, the pattern is going to be pretty different looking from someone who's say a 30, 36, but it should fit them equally well. And then if people should choose to like go, want to reach, you know, fitting nirvana, then they can of course go on that journey. But we believe that it should fit well out of the packet because the reason that a lot of plus size people sew is quite different from the reason that straight size people sew. So if you have the ability to buy any, any garment you want from the store, pretty much to fulfill any kind of activity that you're doing in your daily life, then you might sew for a hobby maybe, maybe you want to sew really high level, couture level garments that perhaps you couldn't afford, or you want to customize it really perfectly to your body and that could be the impetus. But for plus size folks, it can be so difficult to get clothing at all that people are often sewing for necessity. So just sewing to have the basics of their wardrobe that they literally can't buy at the store. And so the kind of reasoning behind sewing is, is different. And therefore the process of sewing might be different. So that's why we take the approach of really trying to ensure that our patterns fit pretty well out of the packet for the majority of people at that size.
- [15:48]
A
That's unheard of for people who read threads because most of us are of the belief that, you know, a pattern will never fit you straight out of an envelope and you have to always make adjustments. I know this is true for me, but I also know that if I didn't make adjustments and I came up with a size and used the size that was there, I would still be able to wear it. You know, I think, you know, I may not love the fit, but I would still be able to put it on and go out and people wouldn't point and laugh. And if you don't have even the opportunity for that, then you're, yeah, you're kind of up a creek. And so it's good to have an option for sure.
- [16:18]
C
I mean, we totally understand that you might put some pants on, but you want to be able to sit in them without like ripping, ripping out the bottom in them, you know, and so these are like very low expectations really, I think. But so adjustments like a, like a full, but like a full seat adjustment or something like that, you know, most plus sized people have a pretty full seat. So I think that really those should be built in if that's the expectation of that body at that size. So somebody who's a size 26 or 28 is probably going to have some abdominal soft tissue. They're going to have larger buttocks perhaps. And so those, those shapes should be already built into that pattern. And so I think it's interesting sometimes when we see people coming over who are used to sewing from the big four, and then they want to make the same adjustments, but the adjustments essentially are already built in there. And so I think people now know that they don't have to do that. But at the beginning, sometimes people, people wanted to do double adjustments.
- [17:19]
A
That's understandable, but it's good if they don't have to. So the book has a number of different garment block sets of instructions so that a person could, or a person or a student or possibly a brand could make blocks for a number of different kinds of garments. So at what measurements do those block instructions go into effect? I mean, they're for plus size, but would a straight sized person be able to follow those and get a reasonable block?
- [17:49]
C
Absolutely. So in the process of writing the book, we did a lot of testing. We wanted to make sure that the instructions were very easy to follow. So oftentimes in pattern drafting textbooks, it's very confusing. Point A to point B to point Y, you know, and kind of complicated diagrams. So we wanted to make it very step by step so it was like very easy for anyone to follow. And so as part of that process, we had our research assistants, Anna and Izzy, test out the instructions. And they live in smaller bodies. And we had them just draft it to their, their own measurements. And, and because we use proportional grading, proportional pattern making system, sorry. We found that the garments actually fit them really well, even though there are very small sizes. So what we discovered through the book was actually that it works for any size.
- [18:44]
A
Can you explain a little bit what the proportional method is that you're talking about?
- [18:49]
B
So we built this. Basically we're not starting from a set of measurements that are already given to you. And I think that's where we differ the most in terms of our pattern making strategy. From books that already exist on the market today. They're all already giving you a set of measurements. So while we do include measurements that you can use in the book, if you don't have a particular model or client that you're working with, we base our instructions on the fact that you would be using your own set of measurements. So every single one of those instructions is tailored to an open measurement. So draw this line to your measurement, draw this shape. This way you don't necessarily have to use a French curve. You actually probably shouldn't. You don't have to use a hip curve. You should trust your eye. Learn to trust your eye and the shapes that you're drawing on the paper and in tandem with fitting, be able to build your skill set in terms of how you are making your patterns.
- [19:54]
A
Yeah, that's something that you talk about in the book. Freehand forward drafting. Not using the French curve or the hip curve or the fashion ruler or any of those pre existing types of curves that, you know, I always think, oh, look at that. I adjusted my armhole and now it exactly matches this ruler. And of course, I don't particularly match the ruler myself, so it's not really helpful for me to have done that. But I'm always pleased that I have. How do you get the experience to do that freehand drawing? Is it just do it and try and see.
- [20:26]
B
Do it, try it, fail, do it, try it, fail, do it again, get success, learn from that, success and do it again. It's really about iterating on your process. And one thing I do want to mention is that when we were writing this book, we were specifically thinking in our heads that our main clientele for this are fashion University students who are 18, 19, 20 years old. So we have to talk in a way that they will be able to understand and not be scared off by. Right. So if it's okay, forget everything that you know, a person coming in who's expecting to make full bust adjustments is going to freak out about that and say, what do you mean? But that's not right. That doesn't follow what I've always been taught. But somebody coming in at that age who maybe has not used one of these pattern making books can say, oh, well, this book just says to draw in a shape, and then we put it on the body and we fit it and then we take it back off and we look at the shape. That's kind of what we're really going for because that's how you learn.
- [21:22]
C
Absolutely. And as a fashion professor, you know, we really want our students to develop the ability to understand what the curve shapes are doing in patterns. So at the top of a sleeve head, what is that extra little bit of curve in a particular part? What does that do when it goes into a garment or an armhole curve? So, so something for plus size patterns that people are usually quite surprised by is the shape of the armhole curve, for example. And so even just being able to see an appropriate armhole curve for a plus size pattern is training your eye to see that different curves work for different bodies.
- [22:03]
A
Yes. And you talked about when you complete a block draft based on the instructions that you have and your own measurements, you will have what you call a fittable pattern. And I'm assuming that that means you're not saying this is going to mold you like a custom Valentino or something like that. It's something you can put on that should hit your body in the spots where it's supposed to, and then you can refine it from there. And that is the goal right.
- [22:30]
B
100%. I think really what we're kind of looking for is a template. We say, okay, here's how you make your block template for a T shirt or a stretchy woven trouser or an overcoat. But we don't know what lapels you want to use. And the techniques that we would tell you to use to draft a lapel are exactly the same in all these other resources. So while we're not saying don't use other resources, what we are saying is use the resources when it's appropriate. So for your styling details, we don't know what you want to do for that. Maybe your client really, you know, likes their sleeves a certain length. So that's something that we can't tell you right out of the gate. You're going to have something that's 100% correct. And I think this is where we differ a little bit from the strategy of Mona. And broad of like not having adjustments is that we know that when you are fitting for, you know, production or for your client, there will be fitting involved.
- [23:25]
A
So Martha, the main model in your, in your book is amazing. She looks fantastic in everything she has on. And I would love to know, if you are willing to tell me, how many fittings did you do with her after you had drafted for her.
- [23:40]
C
We just did one round of fitting. So as it happened. So Gabby, Gabby lives in Colorado. I was splitting my time between Canada and New York City and Martha doesn't live in New York or Colorado. And so we kind of or converged on New York and had a, had a week of fitting where we had prepared toiles of the garments we'd drafted to her measurements, of course, using, using the book and had done some preliminary, I guess pre adjustments, would you call them, Gabby. Just from knowing her body, we had just kind of made some assumptions about what might be needed. And then, then we, then we fitted things and then that was it. So it was a bit nerve wracking to certainly show up at the shoot with all of these garments made, but they all turned out. We were so happy with them.
- [24:32]
A
I really envy your experience. There are some, some authors I work with too, who have a lot of fitting experience and they can just look at somebody and say, this is what we need to do. And I know that that comes from looking at a lot of bodies and making a lot of patterns and having done a bunch of fittings and that you start to understand that. And those of us who sew primarily for ourselves rarely achieve that. And we may not understand that it actually is that 10,000 hours, or however many hours it takes to get there. You can't just learn it from making one garment standing in front of the mirror and saying, oh, I have a forward shoulder. It is really interesting to talk to experts on this who just have it all inside their heads and in their hands too. That's really unusual. So for a home sewist, is this okay for beginners? I felt that it was very clear. I thought that working the blocks looked really straightforward. Did you intend for home sewers to maybe dive in and start making their own patterns?
- [25:24]
B
Yes, we did, and we hoped that they would. One of the things that we kept saying over and over again is we want the knowledge in this book to be repeatable, replicable. We want you to be able to make a draft one time and then remember those steps in the way that we talk about it, because it's easy to see the flow of one instruction to the next. And we also really tried hard to put in a lot of hints and tips into the book. Things about how to fit on a different body, different construction, things that we've noticed perhaps in underwear where you want to place the gusset based on just feedback that we've gathered. But if you're a home sewist making your own underwear, you might read that and think, oh, okay, great, I can do that too. So there's lots of stuff in the book that is not just for university students, but it's also for people who are just interested in making their own
- [26:13]
A
garments in general and also people who are interested in making accessible garments, gender non conforming or however you choose to refer to this kind of clothing. It seems like there's something in this book for just about everybody. It feels like anybody could learn something from it. I really did find out a lot. I had a couple of questions. This is my non pattern making understanding of things you say in some of the blocks. This is drafted as a balanced pattern and you may want to change that. What does that mean?
- [26:45]
B
Balanced usually refers to being the same front to back. However, we know that bodies are not always balanced front to back. For example, the amount of forward shoulder adjustments that I walk people through on a daily basis is quite staggering. And I think a lot of that is because, like I keep referring back to, you know, these other pattern making books that are based on bodies from, you know, ASTM standards from 1976 or what have you. And those blocks are based on a fit form that you use in school and they do yield a balanced block. So you Will have a back pattern, a back panel that's slightly longer than a front, but it's not enough to make a difference. So what we're saying here is if you notice, for example, the. That your client has a longer shoulder in the back, you may want to build that in now. And then you would have a forward shoulder on your pattern. That would mean that the pattern, while balanced on the body, doesn't actually look balanced on paper.
- [27:47]
A
Okay. And I think maybe waistline levels also are involved in that too. Okay. Yep, yep, I understand that. Yeah.
- [27:56]
C
Yes. So I think something that we wanted to include was visuals of what patterns looked like when they were made from the blocks into a pattern. So, for example, for all of the garments that we made for Martha, we have examples of the production patterns that we made from those garments. So, for example, there's a shift dress that we made, and you can really see the pitch or the angle of the waistline in that pattern that we. That we put in, which is more than we already do in the block. So because we designed the blocks for plus sizes, a lot of those features are already in there. So a more pronounced waist pitch, for example, is in there shaping in the T shirt hemline for the bust pickup to account for a more projected bust. And so those things are in there, but sometimes when you fit them on the individual, it might need to be more or less. And so we have those outlines of those patterns so you can see what it looks like on body and. And then as a pattern and then. But stepping back also what it is like as a block.
- [29:01]
A
Yeah, I think that's really fascinating. I've always really loved seeing that when I look at even, you know, patterns for myself that I've had carefully fitted and then compare them to the original. And I look at it, and we are poisoned by being familiar with a standard pattern that fits a dress form. It is toxic to look at those because every time you look at something else, you think, oh, I'm so distorted, or, you know, my shoulder is crazy. Why am I so crooked? And it's just who you are. It has nothing to do with any thing except that the pattern is just essentially a rectangle, kind of with armholes and a neck hole. It's not going to fit you without a little bit of change if you want to get it really, really right. It's a conundrum for many of us. So I want to circle back a little bit just at the end here to ask you a little bit more about pattern makers, especially indie companies, but not really only them. I think the big ones too, who have somewhat resisted expanding into plus sizes and who consider size 24 to be a plus size. That's not, that's not very far beyond the size of an average woman these days. It's a couple inches maybe. So I know they feel it's going to be a pain in the neck maybe or maybe they're not going to sell it. But are there other reasons that they don't want to do this?
- [30:16]
C
I mean, I think part of it is unfamiliarity. Certainly there are expenses involved with developing a second size range. So it doesn't work well to grade up from say a size 8 or 10 all the way up even to a size 24 is not going to yield a good fit really. There does need to be a second block developed and maybe an 18 or 20 that kind of size if you want to have a, have a broader size range. So there is some cost involved with that certainly. And then also the patterns should be slightly photographed on plus size models as well because it's difficult for people to trust that the pattern is going to work well for a plus size body if you're not seeing any, any bodies. But I will say that there are, there is a large community of plus size sewists and in fact a lot of, as I mentioned before, a lot of plus size folks really have to sew for necessity. So I think, you know, our experience with winner and broad has certainly been the repeat customers and, and the brand like brand loyalty is really there in a way that you know, it might be less so for straight sized people. If you have a huge smorgasbord of patterns to choose from, then you might have a little bit less brand loyalty because there's like really countless things that you can choose from. But there are fewer plus size, fewer companies that offer a broader range of plus sizes. So if you are offering sizes that other people just aren't offering, then perhaps you're one of the, one of a handful of companies offering those. So it's a question of a bit of a small pond as well. So I think that the financial yields can be really good, but it is really dependent, especially if you haven't had a large size range before or perhaps you may have been resistant to it. You know, it's difficult if, if you don't already have plus sizes, people might not be following you on social media. So then if you release plus sizes, nobody might know. So then, and then, you know, we talk about this in the book in terms of ready to wear as well. It can be a bit of a vicious cycle where a brand releases extended size or plus sizes and people don't buy them just simply because they don't know they exist. Because plus size people don't just hang around on your social media hoping and praying that one day you will release plus sizes. Most people are like, well, that's not a brand for me. I, I'm not going to follow them. I don't want to make myself, you know, envious every time I open my feed because it's not something that's available to me. I'll just not follow them. So, so then brands do need to make an investment into having good photo shoots with a, with a truly plus size model so that people can trust that your pattern making works well for a variety of bodies and seeing that investment and care that's being placed in, into, into a body like their own.
- [33:02]
A
Yes, I gotcha. I was just looking at some patterns in consideration for pattern review recently and there was one and I, I won't name any names because I can't remember exactly which one it was at this point. I have it saved somewhere, but it has two size bands and they, each one explains what size block they were based on. So you might have a sense of, oh, this one started at a 22, so I can trust it to have gotten to a 28 and it will still fit me. It won't be a strangely stretched out size 8. It should be okay. I thought that was actually the first time I'd seen that information. It seemed useful to me. So I have another final question and this is going off in a totally different track. And this is. A lot of people seem to want to draft patterns using pattern making software. Are your instructions something that they can use for that?
- [33:55]
C
Absolutely, yeah. Sometimes the procedure for drafting a pattern, like the physical procedure for drafting a pattern on the computer, is a little bit different. But certainly you can absolutely use our instructions and it depends which software you're using. So if you're using Illustrator or one of the other vector based ones like Scenely, I think is one of them that's different from using say CLO3D or one of the more industry specific ones. So you can certainly do that. It just might require a little bit of familiarity with the software of how to create curves nicely and create lines of specific links and at specific angles. So, so that can just be a little bit different.
- [34:36]
A
Okay.
- [34:37]
B
And I do think we talk about this a little bit in the book is that we think that when you're learning you should start on paper, if only so you are learning what those shapes really look like to scale. And then once you have a pretty good working knowledge of what that looks like and you're able to go 2d to 3d back to 2d again reasonably well, then you can branch out into software because you'll be able to transfer those shapes onto a teeny tiny little screen and still understand, you know. Okay, well, this line measures here, but the shape looks good, so I know that it's going to work.
- [35:08]
A
I'm old enough that I'm the kind of person who remembers when calculators weren't really easily accessible, and when my dad brought one home from work, I remember adding things on the calculator and then adding them manually because I didn't trust the calculator. And I think this is how I would feel about using pattern drafting software, that I would look at it and think, I, I don't know, I don't know. I didn't measure that angle exactly, so I would need to do it. But I realize that I am a very antiquated generation compared to your students and people who are coming into this thing really having a more professional direction with it.
- [35:40]
C
I mean, we still teach our students by hand. I don't know of any, any fashion programs in the US or Canada who doesn't teach by hand to start with and then introduce the digital pattern making later. Because you really do need to understand that it's also not accessible to everyone with computers. You know, you need quite a powerful computer and even just the logistics of teaching people with their computers crashing and everything, you know, can, can be tricky. But definitely by hand is really important and really just to understand, once you've got a block, to understand the procedures of turning the block into a pattern, perhaps pivoting your darts or any of those procedures, you have to understand how that works by hand to really understand how then it will work in the pattern making software.
- [36:30]
A
Okay, and this is my lightning round question. You might have different answers. Metric or imperial measurements?
- [36:38]
C
Metric. Gabby's gonna say. What are you gonna say? Gabby?
- [36:43]
B
I'm gonna say imperial. But that's just because that's how I've been taught. And I know people say it's not as accurate, blah, blah, but I don't see why it is, why it should be. It works pretty well for me. So we.
- [36:55]
C
It's funny because I think it's what, what you're taught to begin with. So I grew up in Australia, which is metric. And of course Gabby is all Imperial. Now I'm, I'm personally like a real mess because some things I think of in Imperial and some things I think of in metric. So. But you know, we did want the book to be usable internationally and so we give metric and Imperial conversions through the book. And yeah, so it was, that was, that was fun. And even, even so now sometimes Gabby has to like translate fractions for me into metric fractions and we have to go back and forth.
- [37:35]
A
So yeah, I was looking at the parts where you're talking about calculating take up and differential ease. I forget what the section was. And you had it in Imperial and also in metric. And I thought anytime I do that kind of thing I actually use metric because if you try to take a, you know, if you try to take an inch and then you take a fraction of an inch and then convert that to a decimal so that you can do some math with it and then you take it back and it becomes another decimal that you then try to turn back into a fraction, you lose stuff the whole way. And unless you're really good at that, you will not understand that you've made a mistake. Possibly. I mean, I'm all right with it, but I'm not perfect. And so I think I prefer to use metric where everything is easily made into decimals and the math is a little bit easier. But yeah, otherwise I can only estimate things in inches.
- [38:18]
B
That makes total sense. And I will say I've gotten just so fast at it at this point, having hours and hours and hours of time writing grade rules in columns of numbers before even looking at a pattern. So for me it's like it's second nature to just go from 0.25 to 0.375 to 0.625, whatever it is, and then just that's what it is.
- [38:43]
A
That's the thing. You have to be good at it. I think I was editing a book once, I think it was written Imperial and then we converted it to metric and I had to learn all that stuff, which wasn't not the end of the world. I mean I just had a list and I referred to it, but it takes a day and then suddenly you've memorized it all. I've forgotten it since then, but I can see how easy it would be to memorize that.
- [39:01]
C
Yeah, it can be difficult though because some of the convinc dimensions are just a little bit different. So. So for example, in North America a small seam allowance that for the industry, for something like a neckline might be a quarter inch. However, in Metric places they would use a centimeter instead. And personally, you know, I find a quarter inch seam allowance just not really enough. Like I want just a smidge extra better 3,8 of an inch seam allowance, which is what a centimeter is. It's a bit of an awkward measurement on most sewing machines, you know, for in North America, but, you know, so I tend to use a 3,8 of an inch seam allowance on a lot of the kind of detail things. But then in metric a half inch seam allowance is like 1.3 centimeters, which is a very awkward measurement in metric. So sometimes, you know, just the, the practices in different countries are different just because of the measurement system and it kind of kind of affect things. So it's a, it's a bit strange like that.
- [40:02]
A
It is. And I try to remember that, you know, the business about if you are off by a sixteenth of an inch and by the time you have X number of seams, then you're off by two inches. And I think, ah, two inches. You know, as long as it's two inches too big, not two inches too small, I can look at that and fix it. I try not to be too uptight about those kinds of things.
- [40:20]
B
So we actually built a custom conversion tool in sheets or Excel and you pop in your inches measurement and then it translates it for you and into a measurement that we thought would make the most sense. And so I plugged in everything into this tool and then at the end was like, Leila, now you have to look at everything and tell me if somebody would actually say this measurement out loud.
- [40:45]
C
Yeah, I think that if people aren't familiar with the metric system, sometimes they don't realize how big a millimeter is. And so you'll see like fractions of a millimeter in an instruction. It's like, well, you're not going to have six and a half millimeters. It'll be six or it'll be seven. But just I think that fluency, you know, isn't there. And similarly, like if you're not fluent with Imperial, you could come out saying something really awkward as well. That just wouldn't be a useful measurement, you know.
- [41:10]
A
I agree. I think, you know, if you look at a pattern that was, that was made in a country that you, well probably hear right, that was started off with Imperial and then they converted into decimals or the other way around into metric and you wind up with something that's, you know, 6.375. Well, that's not really measurable in that way. You just, you can't do that. You need to, you need to, as you say, the millimeter is about as small as you're going to get in most cases. And you need to round to that or the other way around where it's this pattern goes up to a size 61.3 inches and nobody measures inches by 0.3. So then you need to decide what that means. Anyway, that was really an off the wall question, but I was curious about it because so much of that matters when you're drafting patterns. And I think we've come to our time. So I want to thank you both so much for joining me today. It was wonderful to talk to you. I highly recommend your book, Plus Size Pattern Making for Women's Wear. Anyone who's interested in pattern drafting, there's so much to learn in there and also lots of great information about when you're fitting other people on how to do it in a respectful way. That's going to be productive and everybody's going to leave the fitting feeling good about themselves and about the work that got done. I don't know if that always happens, but I think when you read this, you'll understand how to make that happen. Thank you so much to our listeners for joining us on our 100th episode. For show notes and access to more episodes, Visit us@threadsmagazine.com meanwhile, keep on sewing with threads.
- [42:37]
C
Thanks so much.
- [42:38]
A
Thank you. Thank you to our guests for joining us and thanks to all of you for listening. Please remember to send your comments, questions and Suggestions to thhreadsmagazine. Com. And please like, comment and subscribe wherever you are listening. Until next time, keep on sewing with threads.