Learn to Fit with Melissa Watson: McCall's M6989 Dress

hi I'm Melissa Watson a designer from call pattern company and a Palmer pledge certified sewing instructor all Palmer pledge patterns feature built-in fit meaning that there are alteration lines printed on the pattern as well as instructions in the guide sheet telling you how to fit yourself palmar clutches perfected the method of fitting over the last three decades called tissue fitting it's faster easier and you'll be happier and more successful with your finished garment today I'm going to be fitting m 6 9 8 9 on Danielle it is a princess seam dress with a paneled skirt I'm actually wearing it and a cute collar so I'll see you at the fitting station let's get started so the first thing that you need to do to get a great fitting garment is start with the right measurement for a dress we always take two measurements we take the bodice and the hip measurement the hip this is a flared dress so the hip measurement is going to be less important than the the bodice the high bust measurement and we take the high bust because it eliminates the bra cup size this is what James McColl took in 18 something and it's you what you do is you you put the tape below her shoulder blades in the back and above her bust in the front so you're not taking if you take this measurement you're going to get away a bigger size and she actually needs so we take the high bust all right so you according your high bust you're going to be a size 10 in patterns and I'll just take the hip just so we know if it's going to be the same normally if you are yeah you're going to be the same on the bottom you're going to be a size 10 so normally if you're in between sizes are right on the size we'll go down to the next size down but this is going to be a great fit for you so I'm going to go get Danielle's pattern cut out and ready to tissue fit so the supplies that we're going to need today for fitting and altering your pattern is half-inch scotch tape French curves a clear ruler some paper scissors I have here two kinds of elastic this is for the tissue fitting to go around your waist I just pick one that's closer to the waistband size a tape measure two different colors of ink pens and tailor chalk and straight pins so I have my pattern ready and impressed and I've cut outside of the cutting line of Danielle's size and Danielle is at ten so now I need to mark my stitch lines and I'm going to start with red I'm going to mark all of my stitch lines with red and starting with the back bodice I am marking the 5/8 and I want to make sure to do my shoulder seam and mark here and it's a little bit trickier with the curved seams you want to just mark in various places so you know where to pin your 5/8 inch stitch line this is really great for accuracy when pinning and then also when doing alterations if you move any of the pins for fitting then you know where the original stitch line was and you can make your new stitching line so now that I have this all marked I'm going to mark the rest of my pieces on the stitching line and now I'm going to tape all of my curves so it's very important to tape so when you clip your curves we clip our curves so we can easily pin the pieces together and then also when you're trying it on for example the armhole you won't tear through the armhole in the tissue so I just use little pieces of half-inch scotch tape around my curve and then also I need to do my arm hole right here and I just mark in a few places where if 5/8 is so I know where to start my tape and you're taping on the inside of your stitch line and the little pieces all around great and now I'm just going to clip my curves to the tape not through the tape so otherwise the tape can tear and just clip in various places around four to five clips should be enough for the armhole and this back curve that should be enough there we go and now you can see that you can check to make sure that the tape isn't tearing by just pulling this straight so pull this curve a little bit straight and then you can also see if it's going straight enough so you can pin the two pieces together easily so you as I'm pulling this apart you can see how the clips are spreading okay so now I'm going to pin all of my pieces together it's quite a few and I always start with pinning at the top of the seam and always angle your pins down so when you're trying it on your subject you're not pinning them and it should fit together quite easily especially after you've clipped and your curves great that's perfect so now I'm going to finish pinning all of the pieces together the back princess the front princess the side seam the shoulder seams and I'm going to pin the bodice to the skirt and then we're going to be ready to try it on Danielle but I have my pattern all pinned together we're ready to try it on so just want to make sure on the bodice I actually have the skirt pinned to that elastic waistband where her waist is which is really helpful and when you put on the top you just want to make sure that you bring it all the way up to the base of her neck and the bodice area and now you can yeah relax your arm perfect so we always start with the back so I'm going to turn you around thanks Danielle and you want to make sure that the center back of the pattern is coming to her center back I'm also going to take a look at the skirt and I can tell that the center back of the skirt is also coming to her center back so the skirt looks good the back of the bodice looks good I am noticing that the bottom edge of the bodice right here is swinging towards the right so that tells me that I'm going to need to take a swayback tuck on Danielle and I'm going to just take that right now because I can also tell that we don't need to do any more back alteration she doesn't have a low around this line right here is perpendicular to the floor and then this high round line is also that it's fine it's perpendicular to floor and then also I can tell that the stitch line for the neckline is coming to the base of her neck so we are good with a high run and low around she's pretty straight in the back she just will need a swayback tuck so I'm just going to take that tuck until the hem of this bodice is hanging straight and see how now it's hanging straight to the waistline perfect now let's take a look at the shoulder so as I you know make sure that you're you always keep pulling the bodice on because I don't want to slip down and I can see right now make sure it's all the way on I can see that Danielle it will is going to need a forward shoulder just my shoulder the middle her shoulder is right here and the seam line and of the shoulder seam is too far back so when we set in the sleeve if we didn't do the forward shoulder adjustment she would have a crease in her in her sleeve cap just because the shoulder needs to be rotated so this if we just do the forward shoulder adjustment that fixes that problem in the sleeve and puts the shoulder seam where it should be so just take out the two pins that are towards the towards the tip of the shoulder and you're going to keep the base of the neck the shoulder seam at the base of the neck is going to stay exactly where it is so you're really just rotating from the edge of the shoulder to nothing at the base of the neck so I'm just going to move it until it is centered on her arm and then I will pin pin this back just double-check yep that looks way better that's now centered to it on the middle of her arm okay so let's take a look at the front now and just in looking at the skirt I can see that the center front of the pattern there's a line is coming to her center front there's her belly button so I'm good on the skirt but I definitely can tell that Danielle needs a full bust adjustment because the center front of the pattern is not coming to her Center front so I'm just going to measure that amount in how much we need and how to do that is really what's there perfect is really flatten the tissue as much as you can and then without pressing into her her bus just hold the tape out until you see the center of her bust line which it's I can see it's right here perfect so that's going to be a one-inch full bust adjustment to get this Center front to come to her Center front and I also want to take a look at the princess seam right here in correlation to her apex so the princess seam should about be about a half an inch away from her apex and it looks like it is it's looking really good so what I'm going to do for that full bust adjustment is I'm going to add half an inch to the front panel and half an inch to the side panel sorry the center front because I want to keep this seam where it is and I don't want to add all of that one inch to the center front or to the side because then it will skew the princess seam right there and the last thing that I'm noticing is that the bodice is just barely making it to the top of the skirt so that means we're about a seam allowance a little bit more than a way away from from where her waistline seams should be meaning that she's long waisted and we'll need to add about three quarters of an inch to the front and back of the bodice to give her enough length in the waist and I can tell that also it's helpful because I have this elastic right here so I can see where she her natural waist truly is alright so that is it and I'm going to now take this to the alteration table and we will finish altering your pattern and we'll try it back on one more time so I'm back at my alteration table and I have all my pieces pressed and unpinned except for the shoulder seam right here we did a forward shoulder on Danielle so I need to mark the pins of where the new stitch line is going to be and you'll remember you come to nothing at the base of the neck the forward shoulder is just done at the tip of the shoulder seam so I'll mark on both sides the front in the back there the new pin markings are and that's going to be my new stitch line so I can take the pins out now and I'll just separate these pieces so the shoulder seam is just a straight line so I'm just going to match these markings right here these three pins and just draw a straight line for the new stitch line on the front shoulder seam and then all while I'm at it right here I'll just mark my 5/8 inch seam allowance on the front and I can just trim that excess little piece off right here I don't need that for the front great so the front forward shoulder half-an-inch is done and now for the back the back is a little bit trickier we need to add tissue and I have my perfect pattern paper for from Palmer pledge I've strips of it cut and ready to go for all these alterations makes it quicker and easier just to cut strips so I'm going to match those three pin markings and draw a straight line again so as you can see I've lost seam allowance on the back edge so I need to add tissue back so I'm just going to tape a piece right here along the along the shoulder seam this is I know it's way too big but I can cut it off afterwards so I'm going to tape it down great and from my new stitch line that I drew right here I'm going to add five eighths to the shoulder edge and I can see through my clear ruler where that's going to be there we go and I go to nothing again at the base of the neck of the shoulder there we go and I'll just square this off and I can cut this out now and that's my new shoulder cut edge perfect so that alteration is done and now we need to lengthen the the next one you want to do it in this order because it you don't want to do the bust adjustment first so now we need to lengthen the bodice and we're going to lengthen it three-quarters of an inch and you need to do it to all front and back pieces so I'm going to start with the front there's the back here we go okay so there's a lengthen and shorten line on on all pieces all of the the polymer patch patterns have the alterations lines printed on them so just follow the order of instruction and then just you know your pattern will tell you what to do it's really easy so I'm just going to pin this bodice side front down on the board and I'll cut at the lengthen and shorten line and my perfect pattern paper is really great as well because it also has a grid on it so I don't need to do a lot of measuring which is good because I'm horrible at math and so here on the grid I can I can just place it on a straight line and I'll pin my pattern paper down to my pattern and then I can just measure 3/4 of an inch on the grid of my of my pattern paper which is right there and I'll just pin it down make sure you always pin everything down before you're taping because sometimes the pattern can jump up at you and then get stuck to the tape and then you're in a bind great and if any of the edges are now not matching you can just take your ruler and true them up so this side right here is not really lining up anymore so I'm just going to true it up and trim it perfect do that to the other side all right so my side bodice front is done and now I'll do the front bodice and I'll do the length adjustment to the back but first I'm going to do the bust adjustment I'll finish up the length adjustment in a minute so for the full bust adjustment we determined that with Danielle she needs a one-inch full bust adjustment and we also decided that the placement of the princess seam on her bust was pretty good so we want to add it was pretty good meaning it was right to the left of her apex so we want to add the same amount to this side front and the center front so I'm going to add a half an inch to the side and a half an inch to the center and that will evenly distribute the full bust adjustment so the placement of the princess seam is not going to move you know over to the over to the center too much or over to the side too much you don't want to add it all the one piece all right so let's start with the side front and it looks intimidating with all of the lines but it's easy and you just follow the the instruction on the pattern and then also the numbering of the line so here we have line 1 line 2 and line 3 so first thing you're going to do is anchor your pattern down in all areas and then we're going to cut up line 1 and sometimes you may need to take the pins out if you can't cut through all the way so you're cutting up to the apex or sorry to line 1 where it crosses line 2 and then cut over - almost just to hinge it at the stitching line of the armhole the 5/8 inch line so I'm going to I have the grain line here on the right side I'm just going to line it up with a a grid on a grid line on my board just to make sure that it's staying vertical and now I'm going to swing the left side of the pattern out Intel and I can use my ruler here until it reads reaches a half an inch from that point right here on the left side the blue line - to the the corner over here so that's about a half an inch all right and then I'm going to anchor up here near line two and now I'm going to cut in towards that anchor point on line two I want to make sure that this stays stable up here we keep our half an inch and it's kind of cutting backwards but you get good at it and you cut right up to the point but not through it and now you're going to swing line to down until it is vertical with line one so this is why I lined it up on it on a on the grain line on a grid so I can see you know this is how it was and now I'm swinging it down helpful if you anchor that point right there swinging it down until it is vertical with another line on my grid and now I can anchor this point so now I need to cut on line three because as you can see the bottom at cut edge of her waistline is not even so we need to bring cut on line three and bring this piece down I'm going to move the pin up here and I'll cut all the way through line three and bring it so it is level with the bottom edge of her of where her waist a line is going to be so now I'm ready to thread my perfect pattern paper through and we need to fill in before we can move on we need to fill in these pieces and tape it down so I've added pins around here to keep everything pretty stable and you can use another pin to help thread the the perfect pattern paper through okay so now I am going to take my pins out so I can close up line two let me just trim this side so now what you're going to want to do is close up line two so you needed to open it so you could do this adjustment but now it needs to get closed up and as you can see when you close this because you don't you don't want to have a side seam right here that's that's curved so you need to close it back up to straighten up your side seam I'm going to add some pins here to cold that and as you're closing this up you can see it's not wanting to lay flat so just have some put some pins into pulled it down before you do any taping as you can see it doesn't want to lay flat you need to cut on line two from the apex to the hinge point in like so and this now you can see that the pattern is now laying flat and now you'll take this down and fill that curve in with pattern paper and you're almost done with your side front bust adjustment okay and I'm just going to fill this little area in pin it down so after you added that width now you can just trim this excess off right here and you are done with your side front bust adjustment and now we just need to do the half an inch for your front piece so this one is quite easier than the side front so I'm just going to line up the center front of the pattern which is on the fold here with a grid line once again to keep everything straight and what you're going to do here is put a pin at the top of line a line sorry one a where the where your stitch line is and you're going to cut all the way up to that hinge point all right and now bring the left side out and you can see where the apex point is on the pattern that's where you're going to take your measurement for the the half inch that you're doing to the center front so at the apex point I'm measuring a half inch and now I will pin this side down I'm actually going to pin at the apex point right above and you can see again that this is spread quite a bit at the waistline seem so and it's also now not even with the your centre front of the pattern so now you're going to cut on line to again cutting backwards towards the apex hmm sorry and you will keep that half-inch measurement at the apex point but you're going to swing this line to edge down so it's also only a half an inch at the waist there you go just a quick measurements to make sure and now you can fill you know you have a little hinge right here at line two it's so tiny but necessary and now you can fill this whole area in with tissue and sometimes it's a little tricky to get up in there so use a pin there we go so I'm going to finish filling this in with tissue and taping it down and I'll do the length adjustment to the back and I'll meet you back at the fitting station to try this on Danielle one more time before we cut fabric so I'm just trying the bodice back on Danielle we didn't do any adjustments to the skirt so I just wanted to try the bodice on one more time to make sure after we do the full bust adjustment that the princess seam is indeed in the correct place to the left about a half an inch of her apex and it's looking good you know I can just eyeball it and see if it looks normal and that the center front is coming to her center front and the center back is indeed coming to her Center back and everything looks good it was a big adjustment to do a lot of different things that we need to do so now we can go cut out in fabric and we will fabric fit so now that we've seen that ever all the alterations worked well on Danielle that everything looks good I just want to give you one final look at all the pieces since it I know it's a lot to do a best adjustment in all these all these different adjustments so just to go over it one more time here we did the lengthening of the bodice right here through all pieces and then we did the bust adjustment on the side front we did the half inch on the side front and the half inch on the centre front piece and I took also the sway back tuck right on the back and those lines are printed on the pattern so I just pinned it on Danielle but here you can just put marry the lines together and then tape them down and then also the forward shoulder adjustments which we did earlier so I think everything looks really good and I'm ready to cut out fabric and then we will go back in fabric fit Danielle so I have the dress all pinned together and ready to fabric fit and we always want to remember to fabric fit because when we're fitting the tissue we're only fitting one side of the body so we need to fit in fabric because most of the time people are different from their right to their left sides and in looking at this the dress looks really good I'm just I want to make sure that the placement of the princess seam is is good on the right and the left side and I am noticing that danielle has a little bit of extra room on her left side so I'm just going to turn you a little bit and take it in so she's a little bit smaller on her left bust than she is on her right so I'm just going to fit it to her body because this is meant to be a fitted bodice that looks great perfect and she does have a little extra room as you can see right here in the neck area so I'm just going to take it up pull it up a little bit at the shoulder seam just to smooth that out great and everything else looks good I think we're ready to go sew it up and then we can take a look at the final garment so here we have the final dress I really like it you know last minute we decided to bring up the hem because this is how you like to wear your dresses just a little bit flirty and a little bit shorter and I like the long sleeve with the shorter hem as well you know we always the first time that you make something you're always going to have little tweaks and find things that you you will change for next time but remember that you're always going to need to fabric fit even if you fit a pattern before because every time you make something new you're going to use a different fabric and it's going to act differently and you'll have maybe you know little different minor alterations from there but I think overall this is a really successful dress I think it's so cute and now we can have you know matching dresses we'll see you next time thanks so much for watching and please check out the rest of the video fit guide series

Channel: McCall Pattern

Views: 196,942

Keywords: learn to sew, sewing, sewing patterns, dressmaking, beginner sewing, sewing garments, learn to fit, fitting the clothes you sew, seamstress, McCall Pattern Company, McCall's, Melissa Watson, Palmer/Pletsch, Pati Palmer, sewing clothes, DIY fashion

Id: 6St3yx3Nd2c

Length: 34min 23sec (2063 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 16 2015