213 Fit

How you doing? I wanted trousers that fit.

On the face of it, that doesn't seem a tall order or an unreasonable desire.

I decided to learn how to draft trousers from scratch based on my own body measurements.

You may remember this saga.

It took place over lockdown.

I bought the latest books on pattern drafting.

I read them all and was none the wiser for having done so.

I hung out on Reddit and discovered vintage texts that were said to deliver the goods.

I stocked them on eBay until I'd collected them all.

Flat Pattern Cutting & Modeling for Fashion, Helen Stanley, 1972, Dorothy Moore's Pattern Drafting and Dressmaking, 1971, Dress Pattern Designing, Natalie Bray, 1961.

I'd made enough pants over the years to understand how pants worked.

I knew the shapes of the pattern pieces, what they were supposed to look like.

What I needed to understand was how those curves on the pattern related to my body.

None of the books I read gave me that.

I went to YouTube, and I watched the process of drafting trousers from scratch in countless videos.

I saw how it was done, but the videos I watched detailed the process of designing to a specific predetermined size and shape.

The methodology demonstrated in the videos was the same as that used by the commercial garment industry.

It showed me how to draft a perfect standard size six or eight.

That is not the size I wear.

I wanted to draft pants with the reasonable expectation that the resulting garment would fit my body.

Finally, I settled on a Craftsy class.

Craftsy isn't what it once was, but the class had decent reviews.

I found a deal on an annual Craftsy membership, and I settled in to learn pattern drafting from the ground up.

Astute listeners will remember this period of my life.

I talked about my quest for perfectly fitting trousers through many podcasts.