A recent change in circumstances means that, for the first time in my life, I have the opportunity to focus on sewing FULL-TIME.

Full of enthusiasm, I started out by making up a shirt and skirt that I already had patterns for. I took my time, crafting each element of the garments more carefully than I ever had before. To make the shirt I used the techniques detailed in Pam Howard’s online The Classic Tailored Shirt class - which is wonderful. In the end, I was so proud of the resulting garments. I thought they were beautiful works of art.

What a disappointment it was then to realise that they didn’t look as good on me as I had hoped they would. Why? It was because I had only made very crude adjustments to the patterns and they really hadn’t been optimised for me. After such wonderful initial instruction from my mentor, Charlene Waller, I had gotten into some really bad habits (e.g., just adding width at the side seams and hoping for the best). And, even though I was still making muslins to check the pattern, there was so little for my fitting assistant to work with it was impossible to optimise the pattern at that point. It was silly to have wasted all of that time so carefully working on the garment construction when the underlying patterns were so bad.

Like everything in life, you can’t shortcut the planning and preparation stages in sewing.

So … I threw away the garments I’d so carefully sewn - and the patterns that I had used. It was time to get serious about getting the patterns right!!! And the timing could not have been better because, just at that time, Craftsy introduced two more life-changing online classes.

The first, Barbara Deckert’s Plus Size Pattern Fitting and Design, shows you how to adjust a pattern the right way. She goes through how to add/remove both length and width. That was helpful enough but she also tells you how to adjust the pattern for your cup size. It was a revelation to me that standardised patterns use a B cup for sizes up to 16 and a C cup for sizes above that. No wonder I was having trouble getting things to fit/look right!? What I love most about this course is that it literally means that, as long as I have the patience to adjust and then fit the pattern then there is nothing I can’t make. As Barbara says, that means that I can have cute clothes too ...

One thing I did want to mention. Although this course is called “Plus Size” pattern fitting and design, and the first few lessons do cover issues specific to working with plus size bodies, the principles outlined in this course could be used by anyone of any size to customise a pattern to their specific measurements.

The second, Lynda Maynard’s Sew the Perfect Fit, shows you how to create and fit a muslin for a pattern. Her revolutionary technique of thread marking the Horizontal and Vertical lines (using the grain) has made the whole process seem so much easier. It provides you with such good information about whether the changes you are making to the garment are going to ruin the fall of the garment. What a fantastic idea. It gives you the confidence to work with the fabric to ensure the garment will ultimately fit like a glove.

The combined power of these two course is hard to overstate.

Let the adventure begin!