Sewing Measurement Chart

I made a chart of which body parts to measure for fitted clothing, complete with a visual aid of where those spots are.

A tip I learned in sewing class is, instead of measuring all the way across the body for, say, torso or waist measurements, start in the centre and measure to the side.

If you’re drafting a shirt or pants pattern, you probably only need half measurements for the torso/waist in any case, because most patterns are made to fit half to torso or only one leg, with the expectation that it will be the same or “close enough” on both sides.

(It saves on materials to only use half the amount of tissue paper or canvas before making the ‘real’ garment.)

Another tip is to add at least 10 centimetres to the wrist measurement when drafting sleeves and 12 centimetres to the ankle measurement when drafting pants. This extra looseness or 'ease’ makes it easier to get clothing on or off and more comfortable to wear.

You can add the ease right away when recording your measurements, but I like to save that for the drafting stage so that, if I need to retake a measurement, I don’t have to remember how much I changed it and apply that to the new note.

In other news, because I do want this blog to be mostly tutorial-based, I've started a tumblr account to share my fashion illustrations on social media. [link] We'll see if I'm more diligent about updating that than I have been here! Every once in a while there will probably be overlap.

Gently Worn

Of course, if you're donating clothing that was originally marketed to a vastly different demographic, the question to ask is, 'would I be willing to be seen in public with someone wearing this?', but that felt a bit verbose for what was supposed to be a short-and-snappy piece.

The first wave of winter holidays has passed, which means now is the time that a lot of charities really need support. If you really want to make a positive impact - well, regular giving is best, but the next-best is if your sporradic donations of goods, money, and time come during times of the year when most people aren't thinking, 'I should do something nice, to give back to my community'.

Sorry if this came out preachy. It kind of was. I happen to know of a lot of instances where the reason things were given away was because they were broken in some non-cosmetic, functional way - mostly pants without buttons and coats without working zippers. I live in Canada. It gets cold here. Coats have to be able to shut.

Wow. For a post intended to be short, this sure ended up with my longest out-of-comic commentary ever. Don't worry, it won't become a habit. I hope. I am quite verbose...

And yes, this is a chart. It is a free-form chart.

Asperger's Syndrome and Neurotypical Syndrome: A Behavioural Chart sample

I have discovered the labels feature, which is what I was going for with the Keywords. At some point I will go through my archives and switch the keywords for labels. Or maybe just add labels and leave the keywords alone.

Venn Diagram

Keywords: Circle, oval, overlap, conversation, presumably well-intentioned, family, single, married, divorced, with or without kids, parenting, possible xkcd reference, too much information, opinion, occurance, popular media portrayal, analysis.