A Fitting Lecture Part 1

It's been a week since my first lecture at HandMade, and I've finally caught up with all the work that got behind the week before (mammoth haberdashery order placed today, it read like a telephone book!) so I can start putting some posts together.
It turns out, one can communicate an impressive amount of information in an hour. I was really surprised. I thought I would run out of time, especially as I tend to go off on tangents, but it was all fine.

So, here is a rundown on the first part.

 Normal vs Average

Almost noone fits patterns out of the envelope. If you do, I am genuinely thrilled for you. But it is rare. When I run an average on the daily take divided by the number of sales, the figure I get is rarely the same as a single individual sale. It's the same for patterns. They try to be average. This is NOT the same as normal. Normal implies that if you don't fit the pattern, you are not normal. But, it just means that you are not average. That has to be a good thing, surely!?!
So, your rounded shoulders or sway back or long waist are normal, because normal people have these things; or some combination of the many figure variations comprising a human body.
Are you with me so far? Good. So, step one - STOP JUDGING YOUR BODY. Because, while you are beating up on your big bust or curvy thighs or narrow shoulders, you are unable to learn anything useful about how to dress them. FACT.
Get to know the body you have, the way it is and the way it isn't. You don't have to love it or loathe it, just accept it and learn it and you will be just fine. And if it changes, learn the changes.

source

So, that establishes Fitting Ground Zero for me.

Zen and the limitations of language

Language is an interesting thing. I learned to fit by drawing on my dolls when I was a child, learning how the sections I made could be rendered in fabric. Eventually I started experimenting with my own clothes, and by 15 I had extended this to costumes. Noone ever asked what I was doing or how or why so I never needed any words. Until about four years ago, I was never called on to explain much at all about what I was doing. Then I discovered sewing blogs, and a world where people talked about and wrote about sewing. Wow, all these new terms! FBA, SBA, so many adjustment terms for patterns I had never heard of. Yes, I knew how to cut a muslin or tweak a pattern to fit a woman with minimal measurements, but I couldn't explain how or why I knew it. I've been working to wrap words around what I do, and the lecture was a part of that journey, but even now I often resort to those 'technical terms' like " thingamewhatsit" all too often!

After a time feeling like a fool for not knowing even the simplest terms, it dawned on me that what I knew was more than valid. On Project Runway, the designers applied tape to their dressforms like I drew on my dolls, to understand how the construction lines are rendered into fabric pieces. I was a draper, and I didn't even know it. But having said that, there is a bunch of technical stuff around draping that I may or may not know, but what I do know is I know quite enough to more than get by, and so can you.

I want you to forget everything you have learned from tutorials about doing FBAs or any other technical pattern adjustment, and roll with me for a bit. Because, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and my observation of pattern adjustments such as FBAs is that they can fry your brain, cause excessive chocolate consumption, and there is no substitute for learning by getting hands on with your good self.

source Just how long do you think a Shaolin monk spends on the internet trying to learn how to do that stuff?

I know, you're thinking, well MrsC as you call yourself, that's all very well for you to say with your doll drawing and 35 years mucking about with fitting, but I am just trying to find out what to do, all right? And would you pleas stop ranting and putting up random pictures you googled and get to the freaking point???

To which I say, because I can, that I am going to leave you in suspense until the next post. Partly because I have drunk a glass of wine and it may all go Bad, partly because MrC watching the France/NZ rugby test in the same room is causing me to want to go to bed (sorry, I loathe televised sport, it makes as much sense to me as porn - i.e. doing it yourself is one thing, but watching other people do it is just weird) but mostly because my presentation is in my office and I need it to get to the actual point.

So, until tomorrow when I will return with, hopefully, some actual content! MWAH MWAH!

Best  MWAH MWAH pic of me ever!