Sunday, February 3, 2008

Fitting - part 1 - body map

One of my sewing goals for this year is to perfect my jacket making. In order to do this I am going back to the basics and working on my fitting.


In the past I have been doing a sway back adjustment in the back to fit the bodice to my back waist. I am 39 cms and patterns are about 41. My front waist is 43 and patterns are about 44. Just adjusting the back seemed to work fine but lately I have noticed that the sway back adjustment is making the bottom of my jackets fit oddly. So maybe I need to take out more in the bodice but then add length to the middle front?


So where to begin? I decided to re read Fit for Real People by Palmer Pletsch. First port of call is to do a body map. Here is the FFRP version:





and here is mine:
Oops, I forgot to label the underarm dots - they are the ones below the shoulder ones, just in a bit.

I am sorry it is so hard to see but if you click on it it will be a bit clearer. The horizontal lines in a very faint green are my equal eights. The red dots are my points - shoulders, waist, hip etc,

The bottom line is
a) I am 164 cm tall, patterns are for 168cm
b) I am 77cm in the top half of my body (head to hips) and 87cm from hips to feet. Nice long legs but short in the body. The ideal proportions are 50/50.
d) I am evenly long in upper and lower legs. Both are exactly 43.5cms
e) My shortness seems to be mainly from waist to hip as my waist is exactly on a green line (where is should be)
f) there may be more shortness in shoulder to underarm (the numbers are about the same but my neck is long. Also as I am shorter that the sloper lady I am 1.5cm shorter from head to waist eventhough I am in proportion for my height in this area.
g) I don't have narrow shoulders (and I always thought I did!) - 12cm as per ideal
h)Shoulder slope is ok - 4.5cm compared to ideal 4.25
i) Crotch depth looks short, but I will worry about that when fitting for pants! Not today's problem!
j) I am a triangle/hourglass as Shoulder width is 35cm, waist 23cm, fullest hip 39cm - this is measured across the body map (not around me). See the red dotted rectangle in the middle of the body map? But I think only just a triangle - 4cm is not much.....and waist is quite defined.
Measurements are as follow:


sorry, I don't know how to imbed a spreadsheet so I took a photo!


All comments and feedback are more than welcome.:) Next post I will compare my measurements against Burda....and some lovely body shots...ick!

And in finishing up I would like to thank Ellen and Sofie for helping me with this and not fighting too much over who was doing it right, blah, blah,

6 comments:

Summerset said...

Hmm! Maybe I should do this - I really like the exactness of it all, and in graphical form, there's no denying what's really there. Our builds are similar except that I'm probably shorter than you.

Vicki W said...

I did this exercise a few years ago. I am petite (short) and was making adjsutments in patterns mostly in the pants length. Doing this exercise helped me understand exactly where I am short.

Ann Made Studio said...

Vicki you are well on your way to perfecting Jacket making......all this is great information to know about our self....every little bit helps to get to that final goal :)How nice you had two helpers not just one :)

Tany said...

I should try this too! You are doing great!

Theresa said...

I have wondered about the value of doing a bodymap-I'll be interested to follow your progress-it certainly seems to give you really clear information to understand the differences between yourself and commercial patterns.

Sew-4-Fun said...

Good luck with your fitting exercise. Once you work it all out there will be no stopping you.

FWIW, patterns are adjusted above the waist using your centre back length. Any difference in the length of the front bodice is taken care of by bust adjustments (full or small). The bust dart is the difference between the front and back length. HTH