Coffin - Sewing Shirts with a Perfect Fit

Many sewers, Im guessing, when they hear the word draping immediately picture a designer standing before a model, lengths of uncut yardage in hand and pins gripped between lips, contemplating how next to astonish the world with some new fashion statement, arranging the fabric on the form like a florist would arrange a bouquet, for maximum freshness, impact, and style. This is not the sense in which Ill be using the term!

I persist in calling the process Ill be showing you draping because we will be pinning minimally cut fabric lengths on a form or model to create a pattern, but also because a more precise labelId prefer fittingis already taken, or at least already comes laden with the sort of associations I mentioned previously. In other words, I will not be using all the typical flat-pattern manipulation fitting methods with which most home sewers are familiar.

Why skip these? Two reasons. First, theyre already well described in many other books, while draping is not. More importantly, no matter which other methods might be used to arrive at a pattern that fits a specific body, eventually every pattern is tested in fabric (in muslin or not!) on that body. And unless that test proves 100% successful, some shifting and pinning of the fabric while directly on the person/form is necessary to achieve the desired result that measurements, flat-pattern tweaks, and pattern drafting approaches can only approximate. So, my approach is simply to skip all the preparatory steps and go right to adjusting fabric on the body/form. And then create the pattern from the draped fabric pieces that you know will fit perfectly.

Its my experience that, for shirts at least, its quite easy and practical, and possibly much faster overall, even for beginners, to skip ahead to this testing on the body step. In effect, well be cutting to the chase by directly developing the core skill that all fitting ultimately rests upon, which is knowing how to respond when you see the draped and then stitched-together fabric peices doing something you dont want, or dont like, when its on your body.

Of course, if youre already getting great fitting results using any other approach, Im not suggesting that you fix it by switching over to what Ill show you here, but if you are struggling, this book offers another option. Countless interactions over the years, both as an instructor, and as a staff member at Threads magazinesituations in which one hears about the challenges every day sewers experiencehave reinforced my own experiences fitting myself and others. Fitting is difficult! For many, Ill venture its the most persistently challenging part of the entire garment-making process, despite much effort.

Theres no shortage of books, articles, and classes on fitting, as there were when I was first struggling with fitting shirts on myself several decades ago. I certainly did try to find clear answers to the many specific issues I was baffled byand did get some help. But, so often, the apparent solutions had unexplained limits (add up to an inch?!) or would simply create different problems when a shifted seamline would clear up one wrinkle only to create new ones elsewhere. I remain amazed at the number of fitting texts Ive searched that never even mention that basic shirt-related feature, the shoulder yoke, or offer any acknowledgment of the existence of asymmetric body partsand those resources that do address asymmetric issues, uniformly suggest body padding to conceal differences, which is not a shirt-friendly solution.

Since many sewers, by definition, find themselves within the bell curve of typical body shapes, its no surprise that their usual strategy for fitting themselves is to search for right-now spot fixes, rather than big-picture understanding. But it is normal and acceptable to have a body shape outside the comfortable confines of pretty much average, as so many of us know all too well, even if we didnt even really notice this until we try to fit ourselves!