Flat cutting, easy fitting

The table of contents of the ‘The Metric Pattern Cutting for Women’s Wear’ book says:

“Part two: Flat cutting. (Cutting flat shapes for casual and jersey garments)”

Well, frankly, I thought that all patterns for all garments are cut flat. Just because you have a flat piece of fabric laid on the table to cut. Apparently, the author of the book has something different in mind.

Then there are chapters:

“9   Easy fitting garments (woven fabrics)

10   Basic and easy fitting garments (jersey and knitted fabrics)

11   Close fitting garments (stretch and jersey fabrics)”

I think Chapter 10 and Chapter 11 are exactly what I need. But first – what actually is ‘cutting flat shapes’ and ‘easy fitting garments’?

There is an answer in the introduction to this chapter: “flat cutting without using dart shaping or close fitting waist shaping”. OK, so it’s easy fitting for a designer, not for the customer. Very simple to cut, very cheap to produce, not so nice to wear. 

 

Then the introduction says: “They [the easy fitting pattern blocks] are the base for most sportswear and weatherwear garments, but they can also be used as a means to create innovative shapes.”  If I understand it correctly, sportswear is what in American English is usually referred as activewear; and weatherwear is something to wear to protect oneself from rain, wind and snow on a camping trip. I’m totally OK with such garments to be cut without shaping. Besides, the author of the book says that these ‘flat cutting’ blocks are frequently used for production in sizes S-M-L-X-L etc. instead of smaller increments as for sizes 2-4-6-8 etc. So, these simplified, flat cutting, easy fitting blocks are not so good as a base for custom patterns.

What I do not like is that there are so many everyday garments cut flat and ‘easy fitting’.  As any woman with bra cup size over B knows very well, it’s not a good idea to get rid of bust darts. And I do not like the air balloon on the back, since front and back are cut the same width, but front requires more fabric than back to go around bust. And, in addition, such ‘easy fitting’ style requires deep armholes, not my favorite. 

As for innovative shapes – these may be created starting anywhere, be it any of the basic cutting blocks or just a plain piece of fabric. The key is to be innovative, not what to use as a base.

I didn’t do the block for the woven easy fit garment. What I can see on the diagram in the book is that the armhole is noticeably wider and deeper than in close fitting block; and the sleeve is noticeably wider and sleeve cap is much lower than in close fitting block.

Next step – Chapter 10   Basic and easy fitting garments (jersey and knitted fabrics).

Why?

Why I’m so obsessed with sleeves?

Very simple – my eyes are tired. I see all the sleeve design mistakes on myself, and on other people. And people complain all the time. Sleeves don’t fit; sleeves don’t feel comfortable. And for me, if sleeves are not cut well, the whole look is spoiled.

It is not like all the clothes do have badly designed sleeves, far from it. But a lot. And it doesn’t always depend on the price, or the label. And it’s not only ready-to-wear (RTW from now on), it’s the same with the patterns for home sewing.

Let’s take a look at some pictures. First – from decent to good to perfect. RTW, prices range from $44 to about $1,000.

 

 

See, how these sleeves hang? These sleeves have correct width; folds on these sleeves are vertical, parallel to the underarm seam.  On some sleeves there are some diagonal folds, but not too bad, and sometimes it’s difficult to say if the folds are due to the bad cut or to the body position of the model. Pay particular attention to the underarm area, see how beautifully most of these sleeves hang there? 

Now, let's take a look at the bad and ugly:

 

See all these diagonal folds? See how wide these sleeves are in the bicep area?

And here are good sleeves for home sewing:

See? Different styles, different fabrics, different amount of ease, from different pattern companies. One thing in common - good cut of the sleeve. Wool jacket, denim jacket, jersey, shirt, blouse, doesn't matter. When it's good, it IS good.

And now bad and ugly:

All the same problems - diagonal folds, too wide in the bicep area, bad fit, and these sleeves hang badly. Would you like to sew from these patterns? I won't.

How does it happen? All the problems with badly cut sleeves above are coming from the same source - sleeve cap is too low. Here are schematics:

On the left you see a sleeve schematics with the sleeve cap that has an appropriate height. On the left - the sleeve cap is too low. To be able to set this sleeve in we need to make the sleeve wider, so that the sleeve cap will have the same perimeter length. Note, that we have exactly the same armhole for both sleeves. Then, when you close the armhole and insert the sleeve into it, it'll be like this:

And you'll have to pull the sleeve with short sleeve cap up. The result - ugly folds. Another thing that happens - the angle at which the sleeve is attached to the body of the garment changes. It changes from this:

to this:

Two things do happen then:

1. Since no one goes around with arms outstretched, folds form in the underarm area. True, such sleeve may have wider range of movement, but well  designed sleeve with taller sleeve cap will have good range of movement.  Besides, range of movement depends not only on the width of the sleeve, but also on the depth of the armhole. And it doesn't help if proportion between the two are wrong.

2. If the designer didn't take care to make special sleeve length adjustments (and designers who  are bad enough to design sleeves with caps too low are usually not good enough to do such adjustments) the underarm seam will be too long.

Here is a fine example of such sleeve:

See the folds in the underarm? See how much extra fabric is there? Overarm part of the sleeve has correct length, but underarm seam is way too long.  In my view this sleeve is just plain ugly.

And here is a blouse with wide sleeves designed properly:

No ugly folds, no excess fabric in the bicep and underarm, comfortable width, good range of movement. Just plain perfect.

I think Chanel would fire someone who designed this sleeve on spot:

 

And here is a good one:

The problem with all this is that in life bad things have a tendency to become normal. Just one generation of designers who grew up on RTW and we have all these problems with design. One more generation and nobody will even know how clothes are supposed to fit. To keep things going in good way requires constant work against entropy, otherwise it takes over. 

This is why I write this blog.

Drafting custom sewing patterns

Let’s take a look at the drafting patterns to the individual measurements.

I have two books on this subject – one I have bought in a Russian bookstore when I visited with my friends in Chicago, and the other one is “Finally It Fits”, by Ruth Amiel and Happy Gerhard, published in the US first time in 1973. I have 1976 edition, it is out of print. The Russian book was published in the Soviet Union in 1988, it is a kind of a textbook for middle school home economics class and is very close to what I have been taught in school, but much less than what I had when I took pattern drafting and sewing classes. Both books describe the pattern drafting process in very similar terms, and arrive to very similar results. My personal experience is that these directions for drafting the custom pattern are very good. If measurements were taken accurately, very little corrections are needed during fitting.

The measurements used are a little different. In Russian book to arrive to the armhole depth an elastic tape is put around the neck from behind, then the tape goes to the underarms on front and then around the back at the lowest points of the shoulder blades. To determine the armhole depth you measure from the highest point of the neck where neck connects with the shoulder down the back to the level of the elastic tape. 

In American book they measure from the waist to the armpit on the place of the side seam.

Then the pattern for the very basic sheath dress is drafted. First pattern for the back is built, then for the front. It looks like this, with the skirt front and back overlapping, so we can draw the armhole as one curve:

The side seam is moved toward the back, but it may be positioned at the middle of the armhole. 

Next the pattern for the sleeve is drafted. For the sleeve we need to determine the height of the sleeve cap.

First, let’s see the instructions in the Russian book. We are instructed to connect the shoulder points of the pattern with a straight line; then divide this line in half and square down to the armhole depth line. This is the pattern armhole depth, Measure it on the pattern. The sleeve cap height is armhole depth minus 2.5 cm (1 in). 

 In the “Finally It Fits” book we are instructed to square down from the back shoulder point to the armhole depth line and measure this distance on the pattern. Then square down from the front shoulder point to the armhole depth line and measure this distance. Then calculate the sleeve cap height: add together front and back armhole measurements of the  pattern, subtract 2 inches and divide the result by two.  

The Russian way:

The American way:

 

Essentially both methods are the same – the average of the front and back armhole depth minus 1 inch. In Russian way we calculate the average by means of geometry; in American way we arrive to the average by means of arithmetic: (ab+cd-2):2=(ab + cd):2 -1”.  

If we apply this reasoning to the simplified knitting diagram we get the sleeve cap height to be the armhole depth minus 1 inch. Since these are directions for the woven fabric, the ease to sew the sleeve cap into armhole is taken into consideration. For hand-knit garments we don’t need ease, we can make the height of the sleeve cap less and estimate it at armhole depth minus 1½ - 2 inches. And this is what I have been always doing.  And I didn’t have any problems with the fit of my hand-knit sleeves.

The standing question remains – Where 3" difference between armhole depth and sleeve cap height comes from? 

I keep asking this question on an assumption that ready-to-wear patterns are drafted basically in the same way as custom patterns, but to the statistically average sets of measurements. So they have to arrive to the same, or very similar, results.